Hobbyists typically are about attracting followers first and foremost and their industry intentions are generally benign to well-meaning. Perhaps you have seen some stunts over the past few months designed solely to attract followers and internet traffic. Oftentimes they will engage in “battle” on a Board or in social media with popular but controversial characters such as paid promoters. The battle gets reposted and the follower count and traffic ramps up. They will post on multiple mediums where they can be sure someone else will perpetuate the threads. They will rely on irrelevant and absurd allegories, metaphors, analogies, and references. Over time, the industry assigns them an appropriate value rating but in the interim they may be disruptive. You will be able to spot them by their summaries of news releases, financial statements, tours, etc. If such summaries are inferior, non-existent, overly biased, frivolous, etc then you have possibly identified them. The third class are the manipulators or what I refer to as the hucksters – drawing on a term from the wild west of yesteryear.
These are the ones who pull out all the stops to manipulate shareholders. They distort facts and often use unreliable and suspect references (such as well-meaning hobbyists) as the foundation to their argument. When I speak directly with companies they tell me they did not expect the higher than expected costs associated with shareholder communications. They tell me that is because there are so many “average” persons investing in the dawn of the largest new industry in over a generation. Financial statements, for example, were not written with the average person as the target audience and as such the hucksters can go to work. Now for the first subject.
145
We saw a real example in the fall that I highlighted. Lexaria Biosciences Corp (CSE:LXX; OTC:LXRP) in October 2017 provided investors with a material arbitrage opportunity with its shares trading over 10% difference between the Canadian and US markets at the same time.