RE: Thanks Sam8888
Thank you for writing.
I have copied a post below that I wrote a week-and-a-half ago on the Glass Earth Gold bulletin board.
I am posting it here because the comments about what happened to Mr. Cook's (unfortunate) readers with GEL are identical to what happened to his (unfortunate) readers with CTG.
There is almost certainly no group of shareholders in either GEL or CTG that has a higher buy-price and a lower sell-price than his readers.
The buyers at the all-time highs on both GEL and CTG are almost certainly his subscribers.
The sellers at the all-time lows on both GEL and CTG are almost certain his subscribers.
Mr. Cook replied with the comment below, but although his answer has no real meaning for me, to be fair, I am posting it as some readers of this post may not refer to the GEL SH comments that I have made.
Part of Mr. Cook's response is meaningful if what he is saying is that his readers are a bunch of idiots who act like a bunch of idiots.
But he has to be aware what they will do to a particular stock.
What he is saying in his post below is like someone telling me that the ship is on fire, but not to panic and jump off it right away.
Yes...you might wait when he says not to panic, but since everyone else is jumping, figuring out whether it is better to jump now or remain on the burning ship with the hopes of jumping off later more safely is a hard decision to make, even for thoughtful people.
Even a thoughtful readers seeing CTG at 18 cents may sell because he or she is genuinely concerned that it could be at 12 cents on Monday. And if it is, then selling at 18 cents is not unintelligent.
Of course, Mr. Cook's comments themselves are the only reason that the ship is on fore in the first place.
And given that he has to realize that small-cap stocks like GEL and CTG simply cannot manage the amount of buying and selling that he generates, I have genuine sympathy for his poor readers.
I will repeat the final comments of my last CTG post:
"Nevertheless, even moderate and moderated buying of CTG or GEL would not have whetted the appetite of his readers: There are not simply enough shares available in the markets of either CTG or GEL to accommodate the size of the buying or selling generated by Mr. Cook’s comments.
This is not the stock market equivalent of feeding 5,000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread.
No one from heaven is giving anyone a hand here, save the shareholders who were positioned prior to these fantastical runs and dives...so very lucky though they are."
I don't see anything in my GEL post below that does not apply to CTG in an identical way.
Sam
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Mr. Cook's response to my post (below). I also posted a response to this on the GEL SH page for those interested:
To be clear. My letter is about what I am doing w/ my money in this sector. Depending on liquidity, I wait up to 3 days after publishing a "selling" commentary before I sell. It is price dependent.
In last week's letter the prelude to the Stock Talk sections went like this.
We are selling two stocks out of the EI portfolio as explained below. Neither is a total bust; in fact, the case can be made that there is yet value to be had. However I am cleaning things out and taking the tax loss, with the expectation that better opportunities will be available later this year. I am in no hurry to sell and figure I have the rest of the year to capture the losses; hell, prices may actually turn up by then.
Brent
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My head is sore from scratching it as I look at how Brent Cook and his subscribers operate.
Brent put out a recommendation at 37 cents [on Glass Earth Gold], and his readers shot the stock skyward in milli-seconds as it proceeded to its all-time high of 74 or 75 cents shortly thereafter.
Look at a two-year chart to see what his readers (and some poor hangers-on) did. I doubt that any shareholder "group" has as high a buy price as his readers.
The same is true of the sellers.
Despite there being no immediate reason to sell the stock...no bad news out there and no reason to think it will come tomorrow...he puts out a "sell" recommendation and does the mirror opposite of his "buy" and crashes the stock for no reason at all.
So the poor (in more than one sense) readers of his newsletter almost certainly paid the highest price for GEL (really...look at a chart,...it ran from 37 cents to 74 cents in about 30 days, but most of that increase was immediately following his “buy") as they all rush like a bunch of lemmings to buy GEL, and then he says "sell" and they all rush like a bunch of lemmings to sell the stock.
On average, I suspect that his poor readers have both the highest average buy-price and the lowest average sell-price.
He doesn’t even say, "You don't have to sell tomorrow as there is no rush to bail out...no bad news here...so don't be a bunch of idiots and all sell tomorrow".
He just says "selling" and the lemmings all jump off the cliff at the same time.
If your buy price is approaching GEL's all-time high, and your sell price is its all-time low, then I know where you spend $140 a month.
In addition, GEL just raised money by selling 15 or 20 million shares at 16 cents, and this included some very large and sophisticated shareholders in New Zealand and elsewhere, so his opinion is not shared by all.
And I take his comment quoted by the previous writer, "I think the odds of discovering an economic deposit are very high" very seriously as he does not seem to be a fan of this company.
I don’t know Brent and I don’t subscribe, so I have no comment about how he operates, but look at how his words pushed GEL down 35% in one day and maybe 50% in a few more if the lemmings keep jumping off the cliff.
Just look at a chart of Glass Earth when he recommended it and look at a chart when he said to sell, and tell me that you are really happy about what you did if you subscribe to his newsletter.
It isn’t simply an issue about whether he was right or wrong about GEL.
He, himself, created his own success with a massive rush to buy the stock and then a massive rush to sell it.
He can say, “I told you to buy at 37 cents…look…it has already doubled!!!!” and “I told you to sell at 15 cents…look!!!...it has already crashed!!!”, but both his “buy” and “sell” became self-fulfilling prophecy, locking in the highest buys and the lowest sells for his subscribers.
Of which, I am not one.
Sam