GOGB Dropped

I've finally dropped GoIP Global (GOGB, previously GOIG) from my portfolio - since the value was worth less than the commission to sell the shares, it wasn't worth hanging onto, and I doubt any charity would have accepted the shares. And so, I called my broekr and asked them to drop it from my portfolio.

Since I sold half of the shares earlier and doubled my money, the total loss on the remaining half means a break-even, less commissions, on the investment. Considering how hard it was to dump the shares, I consider myself lucky to have gotten out without having lost significantly more.

GOGB becomes GOIG

In a move that's all to familiar to anyone who's played with penny stocks, GoIP Global changed its trading symbol (GOGB => GOIG) and did a 200-for-1 reverse split on Friday.

Typically, companies do this when they're in danger of being delisted for falling below 0.0001 - and typically, a reverse split is followed by the company dumping tons of new shares on the market, usually before the online brokerages catch up with the name change (hence, you can't dump your shares for a couple of days after the stock is renamed) driving the stock down to its pre-split levels and screwing everyone involved, with the exception of the brokerage that makes a commission, crooked insiders, and the executives who give themselves a fat bonus for their hard work.

But oddly, this didn't happen ... GOIG slipped a bit, then bounced back up.

Granted, trading is still light (one transaction for 2500 shares today, just before the bell), and it's entirely possible that the price is being manipulated ... and there's still plenty of time for the company to dump shares ... but for the moment, it's a strange phenomenon, the likes of which I haven't seen before. There was no press release from the company to explain this - before or after - which is also quite unusual.

I suspect I'm not the only one waiting for sufficient volume to cash out and get free ... and I tend to doubt that I'm out of the woods just yet.

Weekly Summary

Another week's progress shows signs of recovery, but it may be false hope:


The remark about "false hope" pertains to GOIP Global, which has apparently done a reverse-split today and changed ticker symbols. That's almost never a good thing. I've cashed otu and taken profit, but when it starts trading again, the leftovers will probably be meager. Since it's presently (over)valued at $750, that will wipe out the value of my current holdings, and erase the profits I've made year to date.

On the bright side, Petel has bounced back from death's door - just last week, I was considering dumping the remainder. Ironically, this is another company on which I've already taken profits. Maybe the lesson learned is to cash out completely?

Weely Summary

This week, I've held the positions I've had. There are a few other investments I'm watching, and now that the market is showing signs of general recovery, it may be time to consider putting more funds into the market.

Of the positions I've taken Petel is the worst - but I've already taken profits and am riding free shares. A few others are borderline, but most are holding their own pretty well.

The only change I'm seriously considering at this time is dumping GoIP Global - this stock has looked good on paper for several weeks, but there is no volume (as in none - zero shares traded) most days. I was able to dump half of my holdings in small amounts, paying multiple commissions to unload it, but turning sufficient profit to cover them. I may consider liquidating the remainder in the same fashion, just to get free of the situation before it goes south.

Quarterly Report

Here's a graph of the portfolio's performance for the first quarter:


Since my approach is to invest in companies that have the potential for high returns in the six- to twelve-month range, it's premature to begin assessing the success of that strategy, but given the turbulence in the market, and the high degree of risk in small-cap stocks, I think it's done fairly well so far.

Of the 13 companies I've invested in, I've only made two serious mistakes (Pilgrim Petroleum and GoIP Global), though a couple of others (H3 Enterprises and Blue Star Health) are shaping up to be serious dogs, and the jury's still out on whether the remainder will live up to their potential.

Weekly Summary

There have been a few changes in my portfolio this past week - for the better, mostly, and I'm generally pleased with its performance thus far:


Granted, much of the gain is due to GOGB, which is still trading in small quantities - but it's been going on for so long that I'm beginning to doubt whether it's one or two individuals goofing around with the stock price. All the same, it's not attracting many buyers, and volume remains unremarkable.

I also feel pretty smug about dumping E-Trade at $4.12 a share earlier this week - it's slipped further (closed at $3.74 today) and the cheery news has dried up. While none of the major analysts have downgraded it lately, that's bound to happen. I only wish I had smartened up a month ago, when it peeked over the $5 mark.

Weekly Summary

Another week has passed, and there's been some improvement in my portfolio, though I still have the sense that GOGB is artificially inflated, as its volume has been extremely low. Also, it's clear to me that BLSH was a bad pick, and a few others are headed into the deep:


Some of these losses may be due to the general state of the market, and I'm deep enough in the red in my main portfolio that I don't need to take any additional capital losses at this time. Neither am I looking to invest additional cash in any of the companies on my watch list, as their performance has been consistently bad these pas few months. In all, it's a bad time to be in the market, but I'm hoping to ride it out.

Weekly Summary

What goes up, comes down, as the performance of my portfolio over the past couple of weeks has shown:


I took a loss on Pilgrim Petroleum, just to get away from a situation that was starting to smell very fishy, and the price of GoIP has been suspiciously inflated for weeks, and is now beginning to normalize - but values have been slipping across the board and the losses are mounting.

I expect I'll be in the red next week, and I expect that will be an ongoing situation until the market in general shows some signs of recovery.

GOGB: Slow Cashout

Over the past three weeks, I've been slowly selling off blocks of GOGB shares. I'd have preferred to sell them all at once, but volume has been extremely low as trades were taking place at well above the stock's objective value. That's one of the hazards of investing in penny stocks, especially the triple-zero ones.


In the end, I've sold off half of my holdings at an average profit of 200% (tripling my investment), but had to pay four commissions instead of one.

Since I have faith in the company's long-term prospects, I'll retain the other portion, in hopes that the company takes off for legitimate reasons.

Weekly Summary

My portfolio is down to a more reasonable level this week. That's mostly because GOGB is normalizing (after being artificially inflated - high price, low volume) and I decided to cut and run on PGPM, given some suspicious activities I mentioned a few days ago. Here's how things stand now:

My main portfolio (mutuals and big-boards) also took a hit this past month, so I can't justify putting any additional funds into the pennies at this time. I'll ride it out for a while and see what shakes.

Weekly Summary

There's something fishy going on with one of the stocks in my portfolio - GOGB looks like it's way up, but it's been low-volume trades, so I believe someone is gaming the market. I expect it will go back to normal soon. On the other hand, the increase for E*Trade (EFTC) is genuine.


Discounting the $1250 for GOGB, I'm still up about 10% for the year. Not bad for just over a month.

GoIP Signs Agreement With Publishing Company

In a press release dated February 7, GoIP announced ...

... the completion and signing of an agreement with a major worldwide publishing company to provide mobile outreach technology ... in an ongoing book promotion effort aimed initially at the Young Adult community.

Opt-in subscribers will be able to receive and exchange information on books, reviews, authors, illustrations and book content likely to be of interest to the Young Adult demographic, yielding highly profiled, personalized databases that have intrinsic marketing value to the publisher.

Mitchell Leiser, GoIP Strategic Business Director, stated, "Our joint objective is designed to help GoIP achieve its goal of serving networks of mobile-linked affinity groups. These communities of common interest are an increasingly significant social phenomenon of Tsunami proportions."

I had been concerned about the recent dramatic rise in stock price, and assumed that, given the low level of activity, something fishy was going on. While that remaisn a possibility, I'm no longer as apprehensive in general, given this news.

Given the potential for content providers to latch onto a standardized soltuion for making the medium usable, GoIP's value proposition is a bit dicey - but by going after the youth market and capitalizing on the power of social networking can help them to lock in a loyal customer base with strong peer influence. It's a very innovatin and promising approach.

Given this disclosure, my sense is that demand will be more long-lived, and while I still intend to lock in profits should the volume increase to a sufficient level, I'll hang onto the remainder for the long run.

False Profits

One of the problems with penny stocks, especially sub-pennies, is volume. Case in point, my shares in GOGB jumped a whopping 300% in the past few days. Under normal circumstances, I'd sell at least half of it off, but there aren't any buyers.

I strongly suspect that someone is gaming the market, buying small quantities at greatly inflated prices to prop up the value of the stock, in hopes that others will notice and start a feeding frenzy that will enable the to dump their remaining shares. It might even be someone in the company itself, or just some rogue individual who hopes, for a few hundred bucks a day, to cash in and make several thousand.

In the end, a lot of people could get burned, and the reputation of the company will suffer - so my strategy has changed: instead of holding this one in hopes the company will pay out in several months, I'll liquidating my shares as soon as possible, at cost if necessary.

GoIP (GOGB)

Company:	GoIP Global, Inc.
Web Site:	http://www.goipglobal.com
Purchase Price:	$0.002
Current Price:	Click Here

GoIP is a small company that will soon be rolling out a suite of mobile services. The precise nature of these services is being kept quiet (their Web site provides little to no information and their press releases contain very few hard facts), but the potential is enormous. A good analogy is that GoIP wants to become the AOL of mobile computing.

That analogy may seem laughable now, but in the early days of the Internet, there was very little information, it was difficult to find, and it was even harder to use once you found it - so consumers needed a service to aggregate useful information and make it user-friendly. In their day, services like AOL were very popular, and the companies did quite well.

If mobile computing plays out the same way, companies like GoIP will enjoy a few years of success before the rest of the world learns to leverage the channel, at which point the services that people buy from them will be available for free - but there's a lot of potential for profit in the gap.