the concrete example was btim:amex.

going into 2010, with  afresh pump in place, it’s time to revisit and revise.

the plan, according to btim, as stated in its filings is:

1. license patent estates and repackage them; (being done) –still being done.
2. license software  for the building of a clearing house for stem cell info; (done); -progressing towards possible cash flow…unknown amounts.
3. develop a line of reagents and tools for biomedical research (in progress) progressing with cell lines actually actually for sale thru mil, allowing speculators to get actual numbers about 041510. this is being spun by hypsters as a separate subsidiary. a pr firm is doing the work..demonstrating that this is “news” and not events.
4. sell stock to fund the inner circle (being done more and more) and more and more, most recently with a plan to give insiders another free ride to a take under.
5. use the buzz to get listed on nasd or..lol..amex… (in progress) done. and advertised world wide by having gthe ceo ring the bell at the opening, making world tv the same day. so “under the radar” is gone as an excuse.
6. hire boiler rooms to pump (done regularly); being done afresh for 2010
7. increase financiers’ net $$ and % without risk (every year since 96) again.
8. sell stem cells (been being done for over a year without report of any sales) 6+ lines now in the mil catalog
9. cash checks from hextend license and distribute to financiers  to keep the door open,(done every year from 2000 to april this year); yup.
10. get grants, and do work once the $$ are in hand; (limited success with hextend (<$1mm since 2000, studies evidently failed since there was no follow up) $1.6mm a year for 3 years offered by california for stem cells. six month after grant authorised, no reports of money received, but a statement from btim that with $4mm in the bank thy will do no work on th grant project til cash in hand, even tho the grant is for the core of their held-out biz strategy. first check rec’d in october. $ spent hiring people who can actually do the work whiloe mikey talks about it.
11. spin off “subsidiaries) that allow the financers to profit w/o very low risk; accelerating with a paper game called “oncocyte” which was created as a paper shell for the p[urpose of giving new finance insiders a free ride. possibly progressing towards a pump&dump for 2010 autumn.
12. use warrants as a play pretty to manipulate the borrow and bring in cash to the treasury (maybe 5 or 6 times in 12 years); still seems to be happening, especially with btim executing a forced conversion as announced by one of the pumpers working on the inside.
13. paint the tape. hasn;t been done for a while…but will be a side effect of the warrant game mentioned above.

how well is this plan working??
for those who like the story and understand this puppy is about 1% as solid as fnm, i’d suggest a tonne of limit orders ~4, and get out anywhere north of 5 that makes you happy. that can now be moved to closer to 4 1/2, giving a tighter range where shares can be accumulated cheap by trading into accumulation.
that’s 25%. or, if u really like this puppy, open up the limits in a widening ram from 4 7/16, and taper i out over 5 1/4… for 25% plus some free shares. shorts can treat this puppy like a chew toy at 6+..but it appears that btim will be giving them help on getting there, during february. pumpers and hypesters will be working to get it above 2009 hi of 6 15/16. since shorts see the same pump news, they will be waiting.
…since that’s what the players here have been doing since… hmmm…. ‘96??? the pattern will stay in effect, since there will be no evidence of anything like revenues til 041510… at that point a speculation can be made about what kind of future btim can have without selling paper and hype.  the 1st quarter revs, minus anything from hextend, can be divided by 6, multiplied by 26 (that gives optimism for cell lines coming into the mil catalog) multiplied by 1.2 for a slow ramp, and then by 5–as a further pad on the ramp–giving a guess at annual revs for the next 2 years. as soon as such a speculation gets close to full g&a, btim stops being a development stage co–after only 18 years–and becomes a biotech r&d house.
what was it that happened in 96? that’s about when biotime started paying al kingsley for “advice.” that’s still going on. as a result, prudent speculators whoi like this puppy wil ltrade to get their basis as close to his as possible, since ak (as bethlehem steel and outboard marine testify) is working for himself–not the company, and not holders of the meaningless paper that is btim common. hypsters will continue to do anything they can to cloud that reality. the idea that speculators can live on the scraps tossed by predators does noty apply when the predators are hyenas with their own inhouse vultures.

as noted about fnm…and prudent speculators who followed my thought a bout it made another above buffet roa recently on it…
there a class of equities one can only justly call whore stocks.
if u have the $$ to risk, they can show u a good time, leave u diseased, and aren;t going to be brought home to meet the folks.
they are often “story stocks”–but then so is fnm, the story being “housing makes america great.”
the prudent speculator stays cold enuff to examine the dd of serious money, when that dd is >seeable<
that is, subject to speculation.
i recently saw an article which gave me some dd from some very competent investigators.
here it is:
:”$3 billion for stem cell research, as authorized by California voters in 2004. Of the $1 billion awarded so far, more than a third — $358 million — flows to Bay Area laboratories.”
so: here is an asset pool, $3bb over 3 years. $1bb a year.
the holders of the asset pool get a benefit no matter the play, since the $$ will be spent in california, creating some cash flow from which the state will take a cut, and the state will be fulfilling its underlying contractual obligation of their being a stake from which to take a cut.
that already makes this a rigged game, one which people who are not from california derive no certain benefit. thus, following this play is already less prudent than it is for californians.
but, hypothetically, let’s say you have $30,000 out of ur working capital to put to stem cells. In itself, that should indicate that you have working capital far higher than $30k, since “stem cells” are by no means the only game in town.
let’s go verry speculative fwd thinking, and say ur totally future loaded, with $500k to work.
there’s solar, biofuel, stem cells, “media”, materials science.  that’s 5…so $100k in each.
so, $100k is to $1bb is easily workable.
a lot of cirm’s $$ will go to universities, again because as long as $$ are in motion in this direction, cirm will be a beneficiary. let’s call it 2/3. that further rigs the deck against you, but it is a price of  doing business as a speculator, obligating you to then get ruffly 3x the ror that cirm gets.
so, you might reasonable say that if cirm puts 1% of its funds on a bet in which you can participate, if you put 3% on the same bet.
if cirm says a corp with a publicly tradeable stock gets 1.6% of it’s $$, then u can, after your own dd, say that 5% of your %% is parity…$5,000 in the example being used.
anything above that suggests the hubris that the speculator knows more than cirm does about stem cell possibilities for making $$ flow.  that decision range is utterly imprudent–utterly stupid.
on the other hand, crim does not care at any given moment what is going on.
therefore, one can “dance” with a given stock, in/out, as long as the commitment is no less prudent than cirm’s.
and now u have a playable whore stock.

the next step is to examine where $$$$$ place their dd. that can be read from filings, and expreses as the basis at which financial insiders are in, with whatever yout own voodoo tells you about black-scholes and the actual events transpiring…not the news releases.
if a year ago, insiders were in at a dime, then paying more than $1.20 is bowing the knee to them. if the stock is trading at 2 7/16, one can trade in/out until a basis close to 1 1/4 is in the port.
thinking that you are not entitled to such a basis is just drinking the  kool-aid offered by the cult leaders.
buffet says it’s better to pay a high price for a great company than a low price for a good one.
but then, he’s talking about stocks with actual events, actual; cash flow, actual markets, and not “stories”.

Evidently there is a new crop of traders on the market who do not understand the difference between a sales pitch and a business plan and just what a “common stock” actually is. So, i review the salient points again. Because “theoreticals” are for the losers who believe the delta of delta is a fixed point (talked to aig lately?) i will use the ever so handy example of btim.amex as a perfect “story stock” illustrating how a prident speculator can gain a perspective of how to play a story stick when the story makes sense.

the first rule of “speculating” is to >>>look<<<.
the most abused word in mkts ranging from equities to to spray on bald spot covering stuff is “value.”
so, what is btim.amex?? (this applies to allll equities..but this is not a hypothetical. )
btim is the common under a preferred of unknown terms.. therefore it is nothing. if someone were doing f/a n something, like viacom, thy would immediately look at national amusements, since it is known to own over 50% of viacom, and therefore sumner redstone  will speculate that whatever is good for him is good for viacom common.   the pref of biotime owns an unknown part of an entity that cannot pay the interest on its suddenly rediscovered debt from revenues. Debt that it told the SEC was now gone by means of a d/e swap that gave more control to a handful of financiers, but somehow came back into the most recent 10q, without explanation.
and here one can see “value”-those revenues coming in..500ml of hextend has been shown to have enormous, possibly incalcuable value to soldier who gets shot…and that same 500ml has a mkt clearing price of?? <$25. for the prident speculator this will perhaps serve as example of how “value” has nothing to do with price. If it doesn’t, go watch a bunch of visa commercials.
the pref most likely has a claim on the future of a non-existent (as of most recent 10q) entity called btim:asia. btim will have a rev stream of unknwon size from a fictituous entity called oncocyte..but nobody knows how. so what is there to look at? only the “story.”
the other day..on the basis of everything of what i know about the progress of real business,i suggested that btim,amex could have a natural growth rate of 20% a year, based on the sectopr it occupies, and progtression towards its held-out business plan. the “speculation” factor is built in by ignoring the change in o/s during the last year, of nearly 50%. That move alone requires “speculative” intent, since on an f/a, 0/30% is even “more 0″.
anything going on priceways in a common equity with a preferred is a fiction–by definition–that has no effect whatsoever on the odds of success, except when the mkt clearing price allows btim to sell more stock to fund operations. since a corporation an quasi-person is lready a fiction, and the preferred a condition on the fiction’s existence, what is a common equity?  Thus there is a difference between “fair value” and “market clearing price.” As an example, i was reminded yesterday of a ticker for a holding co. and the net asset value–nav–of what is held can be seen everyday. the ticker sells for a small premium over nav, which is a vote for the management’s ability to pick things to hold. that’s a “vote” about perceived performance..not a “value.”
People resist the heck out of being told these things. They beg and plead and demand, and threaten speculators must be silent in the presence of the magician pulling the trick. That they do not hear themselves say “don’t wake me up, i like this dream” is…amusing to me. it is sad to others.
Somebody tried to hold their breath and insist that reality is what they want it to be by comparing btim.amx with proctor and gamble. to wit:
:”This ain’t no Proctor and Gamble,homey!”
that’s right. p&g makes stuff… and sells it.
and then makes more stuff.. and sells it.
and spends more on r&d every year than btim’s mkt cap.
and btim has since 1996 paid ak, then neal, and now garfie to take them over to keep from going belly up.
:”You seem to always pointing out the financials and “fundamentals” in a speculative stock!”
yeah. and therfore i don’t. as an f/a, btim=0.
as a story stock, it is “worth” what people who know the most are willing to pay…which in the past year has gone from a >>dime<< to $2. anything else is “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” and therefore >>>not<<< seeing, >>>not<<< speculatiing…but rather, getting talked into a crap shoot.
and alll the baseball metaphors don’t change that. that’s just more smoke and mirrors.
:”the technology (stem cells)grows,funding,want and need increases” –which this person asserts think change the “value” of btim are each true statements, and therefore improve the odds majorly that somebody will do something. no more..no less.
to assume that it will be btim.amux is just betting on a roll of the dice, without regard for the loading on the dice.
>>>speculating<< is seeing how the dice are loaded, and then betting.
and i am adressing the “prudent speculator” and those who want to become prudent speculators.

This makes a lot of people…non-plussed. the fact that they think their emotions have anything to do with reality is not my problem. people can ask nicely, or threaten, all they desire to. just as people talk to the dice they are tossing.

The fact that an r&d entity will spend as much on r&d as it does on g&a, and an intellectual property co will spend as much on patents as it does on public relations isn;t affected at all.

prudent speculators know that, because they look.

Allen Sherter, who many will recall from Thompson Financial, thinks that the problem is n reality a mis-match of power in how the public and private interests intersect.

As soon as the dialog points to “spheres of power” rather than shared interests, the point fails.
“Credit” is a method for building a belief system. Securitization has been part of commerce for nearly 3000 years.
Goldman Sachs correctly predicted a range of predictions made by others were unbelievable, based on lack of transparency.
The real question is how governance failed in both public and private sectors.
The “pr” problem here belongs to the political strategists who will spin for clients how it is that “we have met the enemy and he is us” is a true statement, excepting the candidate.

What does this have to do with the prudent speculator??
1. transparency;
2. invention of artificial instruments      which allegedly have a determinable value without run testing;
3. getting conned into us/them thinking by boiler room  touts and paid commentators.
4. recognising that sec filings are the first place for dd, and that if the ticker you’re thinking about them isn’t transparent and timely in those filings, whatever else you hear is paid spin. If the filings are timely and transparent, then only 2/3 of what you hear will be spin.
..and connecting solidly with the ball 1/3 of the time can head you to the hall of fame. especially when the market puts no burden on letting the pitch go by.

these hypesters maintain that i said biotime (btim.ob) has no business plan. that’s not anything i have ever said at all. but then hypesters exist to push the greed inverse of fud.

so, for the “record”, here is the summary of biotime’s nusainess plan from inception to now, with michael west, the “stem cell guy” at the purported helm, although al (outboard al, twa al, bethlehem steel kingsley) is actually now running the shoppe.

i have never sad that btim has no bizness plan.

the plan, according to btim, as stated in its filings is:

1. license patent estates and repackage them; (being done)
2. license software  for the building of a clearing house for stem cell info; (done);
3. develop a line of reagents and tools for biomedical research (in progress)
4. sell stock to fund the inner circle (being done more and more)
5. use the buzz to get listed on nasd or..lol..amex… (in progress)
6. hire boiler rooms to pump (done regularly);
7. increase financiers’ net $$ and % without risk (every year since 96)
8. sell stem cells (been being done for over a year without report of any sales)
9. cash checks from hextend license and distribute to financiers  to keep the door open,(done every year from 2000 to april this year);
10. get grants, and do work once the $$ are in hand; (limited success with hextend (<$1mm since 2000, studies evidently failed since there was no follow up) $1.6mm a year for 3 years offered by california for stem cells. six month after grant authorised, no reports of money received, but a statement from btim that with $4mm in the bank thy will do no work on th grant project til cash in hand, even tho the grant is for the core of their held-out biz strategy.
11. spin off “subsidiaries) that allow the financers to profit w/o very low risk;
12. use warrants as a play pretty to manipulate the borrow and bring in cash to the treasury (maybe 5 or 6 times in 12 years);
13. paint the tape.

how well is this plan working??
for those who like the story and understand this puppy is about 1% as solid as fnm, i’d suggest a tonne of limit orders ~4, and get out anywhere north of 5 that makes you happy.
that’s 25%. or, if u really like this puppy, open up the limits in a widening ram from 4 7/16, and taper i out over 5 1/4… for 25% plus some free shares.
…since that’s what the players here have been doing since… hmmm…. ‘96???
what was it that happened in 96? that’s about when biotime started paying al kingsley for “advice.”

5 day chart

On the other hand, here’s another chart

Sadly, they are for the same ticker. So, where do you buy this puppy?? the theory of never catch a falling knife says not until it breaks below the bollinger’s…which currently is under 2. that will of course change.

by reading the filings you can get the sense that somebody wants this puppy at 4+ for long enough to get onto a national mkt (it;s currently :obb)

also in the filings is the news that warrants that strke @ 2 are all over the place.. bad.

also in the “news” is that aforeign money will be aiming at it. good.

where’s the balance point???

looking at the chart & the filings together, shows me a little shelf there just under 4.. like 3 7/8. given that the news is positive for the foreseeable future, that there had to be a lotttt of shorting at 6+, and only moderate sigs of covering thus far, placing decent sized orders all over 3 3/4 to 4 1/8 will probably get some fills.

and the bounce back on the next “news” will aim back close to 5, allowing limit sells at 4 1/2 to executre fairly quickly (th annual meeting is within 2 weeks and the pump will be getting pumped).

that’s ruffly 12 1/2 % in ruffly 2 weeks. an apr the prident speculator can live with.

when the chart says run and the boiler rooms say buy, the prident speculator says, lemme go read the filings.

i was reminded of what lays deep under the foundations of the self-evidency of walres’ law, the problem of the st. petersburg paradox.

Prudent speculators might recall it in their dim academic past, or not. The problem for those in the biz of analysing the stories behind story stocks, as it relates to walres and the father of high-flying, bernoulli, is this is simple problem: how do you overcome the intuitive response against an inherently rigged game?

In casinos, the answer is “distraction.” In the market, when the rigged game is being played, the  similar answer is “expectation”.  Walres’ law, to cut closer to the bone, says if something changes in an ecnonomy, it’s because it was imported or exported. That’s basically garbage, becuase of what i used to call the 4s paradigm: sun,soil,sweat, serendipity. The sun keeps shining, adding more energy to the earth in a day than humans use in a year. The amount of soil per capita keeps going down, but with sweat and serendipity the gains from it, as corn or aluminum keep going up in proportion to sweat and serendipity.

The “story stock” player is betting on serendipity and sweat.

The momo player is betting on the force generated by a mob.

The two can frequently intersect, at which point explosive growth in mkt cap should happen, and be bounded by only 2 issues: the math of the st. petersburg paradox creating an intuitive bound, or walres law showing that stock is being imported into the market faster than liquidity.

Penny stock touters, in boiler rooms, bucket shops, private fuinds, etc., are often reliant on stories like, “it went form 3/16 to 2 in a year, and it hasn;t started yet.” Or perhaps, “it was holding 2, and suddenly it’s at 5, better let me sell you some before you miss the real gains”

Sound familiar??

Better yet, does this chart look familiar?

What does it tell the prudent speculator??  Time value of money added in:

do you keep tossing the coin after 7?

or did you leave @5?

the chart says it’s going to 8, and can be seen to predict 9+, after enough time goes by, but of course very time value increases the odds on the traditional failure of any martingale.

so, what does walres law tell you about the environment? Is the total supply of chips holding steady, or going up? is the ingoing liquidity  going to keep rising  at the same rate, or get stable?

at what point did you enter the game, and what perceived utility of outcome did you have?

so, if the coin toss here is a penny stock, what’s the play?

imho, when dilution is a known, and ingoing liquidity depends on a pump forcing it into the field, prudent speculating says leave in the first 1/3 of the game.