Pump for PetroTerra Corp. (OTCMKTS:PTRA) Crashes Further
It has been an entertaining little run and some traders may have even profited from it but it’s over now. The pump job targeting the stock of PetroTerra Corp. (OTCMKTS:PTRA) ran out of breath a few days ago after causing quite a ripple in price, then came crashing down hard and fast. Yesterday PTRA dropped another 10% to close at $0.89 per share.
The company had a weird, one might almost say anomalous trading session on Oct 8, with the price climbing 80% on a mere 1000 shares traded in total for the day. This sort of volatility is not a precedent for the stock, with many zero volume days in the past months, followed by massive percentile swings in either direction, occurring on as little as 1000 shares in total daily volume.
A few days later came the first pump email, sent by promoter Wall Street Report. Unlike the majority of pumps over the last year and a half, this one was actually backed up by a promotional budget of $150,000 – no small sum, especially considering the way pumper compensation has been dropping for months.
The pump did its job just fine, as the disclaimer revealed it was a one-week deal. PTRA shot up from $0.59 to intraday highs of $1.63 late last week, then the inevitable crash came. The pumper promises of buying the stock, then being able to “sit back and relax” burned pretty nastily those who bought in late. Of course, that could have been avoided if traders took a bit of time to look through PTRA’s latest quarterly report, which contains the following:
- $2 thousand in cash
- $129 thousand in liabilities
- ZERO in quarterly revenues
- $93 thousand in quarterly net loss
The fact that PTRA has allotted an annual CEO salary of $120,000 is not helping much, given the performance of the business.
Following a reverse 1-for-2.5 split effected in July, PRTA sold 76 thousand shares at $0.28 apiece in August, at a significant discount from market prices.
