Arch Therapeutics Inc (OTCBB:ARTH) Falling To Pieces
It would appear that more and more money is being poured into the pump for Arch Therapeutics Inc (OTCBB:ARTH). The campaign started on July 8 when the landing page written by Mr. Ian Cooper went live. We talked at length already about how far-fetched his predictions, price targets and opinions are, so, instead of discussing them once again, we’ll focus on the disclaimer which, during the first days of touting, said that the total promotional budget stands at around $790 thousand.
Without a doubt, that’s quite a lot of money and yet, having in mind how long it took the pumpers to get the whole thing going, we were expecting the budget to be somewhat bigger. Our expectations were high and we weren’t disappointed. During the second half of July, the fine print on the landing page was edited and it then said that the total amount of money spent on the pump is around $1.2 million. “That’s more like it!”, we thought, and we continued observing ARTH‘s unpredictable stock behavior (we’ll get to it in a minute). Yet, $1.2 million, apparently, isn’t enough to pump a small cap venture and recently the disclosure section of the pump page was revised once again. This time it says: “Advantage Media Corp., the third party advertiser, has paid $1,329,920 USD to Full Service Media, LLC (FSM) as of August 12, 2013 for this advertising effort in an effort to build investor awareness.“. They also got 2.5 million restricted shares and the whole thing really is confusing because according to the paper mailer brochure, the total budget amounts to no less than $2.9 million which leads us to believe that the pumpers might want to be a bit more careful with the fine print.
Whatever the budget is, a pump is a pump and it had a devastating effect on ARTH. You can see from the chart at the beginning of the article that the curve drawn by the stock price is so wavy, it could give you sea sickness.
Even before the pump, ARTH was performing quite admirably for a newborn ticker. It was climbing steadily and, despite a few corrections, it had its sights firmly set on the $1 per share mark. The launch of the landing page opened the floodgates for investors and that, in turn, resulted in daily gains of around 36% on July 9. The following session also ended in the green meaning that ARTH‘s value was around $1.30 per share.
Having done some research on the company, we knew that maintaining that price in the long run was impossible, but even so, we didn’t expect the whole thing to go up in smoke so quickly. By July 12, just four days after the campaign had started, ARTH was back below the $1 per share mark and on July 18 it sank below the $0.50 barrier. At this point there were already quite a lot of investors licking their wounds and counting the losses but, it would appear that the pumpers weren’t ready to give up.
Paper mailer brochures continued clogging up investors’ P. O. Boxes and ARTH was back on the rise once again. Of course, another run to the previous highs was out of the question but it did manage to reach around $0.68 on July 25. It then plummeted back down and even though ARTH themselves tried to help with the last push from the beginning of August by issuing a couple of press releases, the interest from traders was so weak that it’s not really worth talking about.
Yesterday, the ticker lost a further 18% which means that the current value stands at $0.38 and while some emails are still flying around, and the budget seems to be growing, we’re having some serious doubts that anything is capable of lifting the ticker off the ground at this point. Of course, if the pumpers try really hard, they might just create enough of a buzz to give ARTH another push, but it will probably be so short-lived, that it’s just not going to be worth the risk.
All in all, despite the growing budget and a couple of new emails from yesterday, we get the feeling that just like Xumanii, Inc. f/k/a Medora Corp (OTCMKTS:XUII) and Sanborn Resources Ltd (OTCBB:SANB), the pumpers might have had enough of ARTH, which is why staying away might not be a bad call. Unless, of course, you can afford the losses.
