RE: buyingThere's absolutely nothing wrong or fraudulent about shorting the stock, its the fact that they are UNDECLARED that I think should be investigated.
The last time this happened... and it was almost exactly the same circumstances, the culprit was the VIKING HEDGE FUND out of the US. Pierre has been down to see them (and others down there) a few times. Its down right unethical for a firm to act this aggressively on the back of being approached regarding being involved in a financing but I am afraid it happens all the time. I am willing to bet they're up to it again, they likely made a bundle last time around and it looks like there set to make another bundle on this round.
This kind of shorting and manipulating is easy for a small to medium sized aggressive hedge fund. Particularly when you have all the factors lined up as we did here... extremely weak sector, cash strapped company, poor managagement decisions, unlikely short term positive catalysts and lack of significant institutional support. All of these add up to shorting anywhere from a million to five. million shares without any problem. The market has been so thin ( up until yesterday ) and compounded by some real sellers, its been easy to manipulate the price lower almost on a daily basis.
I truly hope management listens to us .... Wouldnt it be great to see whoevers doing this get ZERO allotment in the secondary offering and force them to cover in the open market in the face of good news.... then we'll have some long awaited fun.