At precisely the moment that a Dow Jones headline crossed the wires regarding a dubious and unsubstantiated comment about Venezuela “eying nationalization of mining,” my real-time ticker stopped for the TSE and AMEX, but not for the NYSE and Nasdaq.
So while I was thinking that KRY was trading relatively strongly yesterday, I was jammed with inquiries as to the dramatic sell-off in KRY shares. I took the following real-time screenshots as soon as I saw on a different monitor that KRY had indeed collapsed.
To the very minute! This is a complete and utter joke.
According to the company,
..nothing has changed with our position or expectations. DowJones ran a headline and as soon as it hit, the stock sold off:
13:39 *DJ Venezuela Also Eyeing Nationalization Of Mining -Minister
The following story then came out about 15 minutes after the headline:
RIO DE JANEIRO (Dow Jones)--Venezuela, in addition to planning the nationalization of other key sectors of the economy, eyes the nationalization of the mining industry, the country's foreign minister said Thursday. "The basic industries of minerals should be in the hands of the national state," Foreign Minister Nicholas Maduro said. He spoke at the sidelines of a summit of leaders of the Common Market of the South, or Mercosur trade block, taking place here Thursday and Friday. Maduro, however, didn't elaborate on the issue of nationalizing the mining industry. A number of Canadian, U.S. and Brazilian mining companies are operating in Venezuela.
(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires
01-18-07 1353ET
Copyright (c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.- - 01 53 PM EST 01-18-07
It is my understanding that people at CPM, a research firm in NYC, and Wellington West, a Cdn broker-dealer, had mentioned Crystallex to Cramer initially. That's what I've heard.
Although I was barely able to speak, I called a VP at CPM, whom I personally know, to see if that Street info was correct or if they had changed their outlook on Crystallex. I didn’t get a call-back.
Something is going on here. If anybody knows what Wellington West or CPM is saying about Crystallex recently, I’d like to hear of it. I also think somebody ought to be analyzing the block trades in this stock for the past couple of months to determine which brokers are on the buy/sell.
I don’t know what’s in Cramer’s head, but his double case of histrionics regarding KRY in the past week is over the top. The Dow Jones reportage on this company is also over the top. The coincidental loss of the Comstock real-time data feed at the precise moment the latest DJ story first hit the headlines is so far over the top that it must be explained or else DJ has lost all credibility with me.
There is an explanation here, and shareholders ought to be demanding it.
Cramer happens to like Yamana [NYSE: AUY, TSE: YRI], which I also think is a stand-out Cdn goldminer operating in the Americas. But, on a relative basis, Yamana is no better than say Alamos Gold (AGIGF.PK) or Gammon Lake Resources (GRS), or a few others, in terms of the EPS momentum and size.
Addendum: I did get a call from Adam Crown, VP at CPM Group. He stated that CPM is not in the business of recommending or reporting on individual companies, and played no role with respect to the Cramer discussion re KRY. So my information was incorrect.
Adam did, however, point me to book called Commodities Rising, by Jeffrey Christian, which is available in bookstores, and he said I would be getting a personal invite to their hospitality room at the Prospectors and Developers Show in Toronto in March. I'll have to go because that's where my wife won a silver bar in a biz card raffle last year.
About Wellington West, I see that Catherine Gignac has a "Strong Buy" on KRY. This screenshot came to me yesterday morning from my "country friend." I should have checked first, and made such a remark.
Barry Allan at Research Capital has a Sell rating. Barry, btw, in my view, is one of the very best mining analysts in Canada. Twenty years ago, I put him at the same level as Pierre Lassonde (ex-Newmont president) and Tony Garson (ex-Canaccord, Haywood, and Dean Witter) who is now an independent analyst and principal in some mining ventures.
I'd respect Barry Allan's judgment in most mining matters. KRY, however, is a different type of situation. It's for speculative money, pending the outcome of final permitting. I think Barry would take a very different view if Crystallex held that permit in hand.
Tony Garson agrees with me about the prospects of Las Cristinas, because it was he and I who interviewed Todd Bruce, the first time I met Todd. Tony was going to do a report for me, but without the permit in hand, he decided that other matters were more pressing. A lot of people feel that way.
KRY 1-day chart
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This article has 9 comments:
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Jeffrey Todd
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16 Comments
My Website
Jan 19 04:11 AMMost of Hugo's deputies are fielding questions right and left. They are using talking points without specific guidelines. Even Chavez wakes up each day with a new outline.
What he has nationalized is in place, running on overdrive, and profitable. Mining in Venezuela has mostly been a "cottage industry" and he will not settle for that status quo.
Hugo Chavez is many things, but not stupid.
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Jeffrey Todd
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16 Comments
My Website
Jan 19 04:29 AMI feel too many publishers are making calls with their own site and promotion of their products in mind. This is too bad. If one reads IBD and follows stocks in the news or stocks with high ratings, these are the stocks profiled in SeekingAlpha. Not the time to buy.
I'll bet SeekingAlpha won't publish this article. That's ok I have my own site.
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CrossProfit
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567 Comments
My Website
Jan 20 07:06 AMCan we get a copy? More interesting to us is the breakdown by author. I’m sure that SA readers would like to know the names of authors that are more in tune with the market and those that are out of fashion.
As a service to all, would you be willing to keep track and publish your results on a monthly or quarterly basis? Since various authors use different methods and time horizons, how do you suggest logging this information?
Anyone out there have any suggestions?
Perhaps using the authors own mechanism is the correct approach. As long as a position is still open it is identified as ‘in play’, regardless as to the amount of time that has elapsed. Only closed positions are graded. A passing mark is equal to or greater than the S&P return for the same period. Jeffrey, perhaps you can post a detailed proposal for all to comment on.
As for SA not publishing…you got the wrong idea about Seeking Alpha. As long as you are respectful of others, SA will publish articles and comments with the zaniest conclusions. It is up to the reader to either agree or disagree with the author. That is probably why statistically SA will ‘lag’ other sources because we are exposed to ideas that can not get published elsewhere.
Then again, some of those crazy analysis, prophecies and ‘book talking’ turn around and become reality. The majority of articles written are pretty in line with the consensus on the street. SA has a wonderful habit of trying to find a blog that takes an opposing view to a recently published consensus article. Such being the case; mathematically SA doesn’t want to get it right more than 50% of the time!
SA is all about opposing views and ideas to varying degrees with a steady flow of informative transcripts!!!
This brings us full circle to the ‘by author’ data – now that would be useful.
CrossProfit
(Jeffery, we know that we had only one total miss on SA throughout 2006 but we didn’t count all the correct calls so we are very interested in the statistical information.)
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Brendan Henry
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4 Comments
Jan 19 07:48 AMChavez the marxist continues to nationalize Venezuela's economy-- farmland, oil, electricity, telecom. But Bill and other KRY bulls somehow believes that it will stop at mining. They insist the permitting process is proceeding! This merely allows KRY to further invest in the property. Once it start producing, then Chavez will confiscate it. This stock is a sucker bet for anyone who can read a newspaper.
Bill, I have some vintage 1950 Havana casino stock to sell you. Excellent asset!
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efrazee33
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1 Comment
Jan 19 09:24 AMI've been with KRY for over three years, and during that period have ridden the rolller coaster. Yes, it is a speculative stock,
but every single downward spike, (and believe me there have been plenty) was a result of erroneous news releases, most of
which came from Bloomberg. I often wondered if the stock was being manipulated. I experienced the same 'freeze up' on
Tuesday, the 9th of this month, toward then end of the trading session, when Crystallex plummeted over 75 cents in a matter
of minutes, and I was effectively blocked out of making a trade that would bumped my share volume. This freeze up effected
my Ameritrade account only, as all other sites were 100% functional. After reading this article, I'm convinced the events we've
both experienced were no coincidence...
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Nova Law
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60 Comments
Jan 19 11:09 AMGeorge Bush is a regular cause of his woes. Also Goldman Sachs. And recently, the reporters at Dow Jones and Bloomberg have been accused of being crooked by Cara.
The best place for him to look for the cause of his investing woes is in the mirror. KRY is a company with no earnings, revenues which have fallen by 50% over the last couple years, very little cash left, and the only asset is the dwindling hope that the self-proclaimed socialist dictator Hugo Chavez allows them to do some mining in Venezuela. In short, it is a disaster masquerading as a publicly-traded company.
Cara should be ashamed of himself for causing innocent people to lose money by pumping up KRY. Perhaps someone will be angry enough to file a civil action against him. Given his consistent lack of disclosure and dubious reliability, such a case would be an interesting landmark.
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huangjin
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280 Comments
Jan 19 03:12 PM-
sufiy sufiy
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73 Comments
My Website
Jan 21 08:40 AMsufiy.blogspot.com/200...
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Nova Law
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60 Comments
Jan 30 04:38 PMDetails were here as of 4:30pm EST, not sure if they will disappear through editing of his website, so I have taken a screenshot to preserve the possible evidence.
www.billcara.com/archi...
Circulating false and bogus stories is illegal in every jurisdiction in North America. The perpetrator(s) ought to receive scrutiny from the SEC, RCMP, FBI, or other law enforcement agency. This looks very, very bad for Mr. Cara's already-tattered credibility.