Canadian CANNAINVESTOR Magazine November 2017 | Page 174

In our last issue, one case study was titled “The Case of Klondike Gold” – a very recent example of what can happen when misleading information percolates about the potential of a company’s claims and potential. Since that time, and relevant to this industry, PUF Ventures Inc (CSE:PUF) issued a News Release on September 27th that included forward statements about the potential for PUF’s announced expansion into Australia. IIROC halted trading in shares of PUF and PUF issued a clarification to the news release and shares resumed trading. In no way is this a suggestion that PUF intended to mislead. In fact, quite the contrary as it appears at face value to be unintended. PUF of course is a late stage ACMPR applicant and is a member of the much coveted Canopy CraftGrow Collection. PUF is included in the CannaInvestor Magazine stock lists as well as the late stage applicant strategy and is one of our case studies this month.

Taking it at face value that it was benign enthusiasm and marketing that crept into PUF’s news release leading to the halt trade and the subsequent “clarification” statement, how does one differentiate between such a situation and something that is much less benign? One must be very careful when using adverse terms and language that could be seen as misleading, slanderous or worse. Unfortunately, one cannot

call a company a scam or run by fraudsters until such time as charges laid and one must always use the term “alleged” in the event charges do not lead to conviction. Only after conviction can such verbiage be used as “fact”. Be wary of those that use social media and other platforms with unproven suggestions of stock manipulation schemes (such as “pumping and dumping”) as there is usually an ulterior motive behind such actions – are they a known paid stock promoter/influencer and are their comments directed at a company that is not their client? The carrot and stick approach could be at play … if you are a client you receive promotional write ups and if you are not a client you risk some sour commentary. I may have used the term “carrot and stick” but others may refer to it as extortion or being similar to a “protection racket”. Regardless, it is all noise that only detracts from the Retail Investor and that is exactly why this is repeated each month just as our proven pioneering industry leading analysis, content, and strategies are also updated and repeated.

The CBC itself weighed in on this very tactic:

Scammers are moving away from email and taking to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Watch out for overly promotional language about the "next big thing" or something "going to the top of the charts". Don't respond to direct messages about investments or stocks that come to you via social networks or text message. Resist the temptation to repost, retweet, or redistribute information about a stock that's being heavily promoted on social networks or the internet. Remove companies or people from your social networks who aggressively promote investments. SOURCE

I pay little attention to the blatant headline spammers and bots but it saddens me when some pretend to be there in your best interests by creating entire personas “dedicated” to identifying the scam companies – months later they have a handful of followers and their posted information is just utter nonsense. Chances are the Cannacon Detector user ID some may be following in hopes to filter out the bad companies may as well have chosen the user name Complete Donkey instead.

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