Norstra Energy, Inc. (OTCMKTS:NORX) Comes Out of Suspension, Onto Grey Market

After getting hit by a SEC suspension order on June 26, Norstra Energy, Inc. (OTCMKTS:NORX) resumed trading just yesterday. Not surprisingly, the company returned on the grey market tier. In what seemed like a quick and desperate push to get out, the holders of over 3 million NORX shares sold them to new buyers and the stock’s price dropped 47%.

For those who have lost track of the goings on around NORX, before the suspension the stock was pumped through just about any avenue imaginable, including paid email touts, dedicated pump website domains and hard paper mailers matching the contents of the pumper landing pages and sites. The total budget disclosed for promoting NORX exceeded $3.5 million.

The stock had already crashed from the highs it reached in the heat of the pump campaign when the suspension order came through. Several days into the suspension period, NORX came out with a press release, stating they had no connections to the promoters and that the price targets set in the ads were not based on any realistic estimation of the company’s performance. Sadly, this announcement was made terribly late and came through feeling very halfhearted, considering the company sat idly and pushed optimistic PR as their stock’s price quadrupled, then crashed 50%, all in the midst of an exceptionally widespread pump campaign.

It seems investors had none of their confidence in NORX restored, neither by the involvement denial PR, nor by Tuesday’s announcement that potential investors visited the company’s well location. The latter announcement seems like yet another attempt on part of the company to bolster confidence in its stock that had already been drawn and quartered by pumps and crashed another 46.99% in yesterday’s session – the first day of trading after the suspension. Traders who have high hopes of recovery should bear in mind that only a fraction of suspended companies ever make it out of the grey market tier and the majority of those who do usually tend to quietly oscillate near the absolute bottom.

Another recently suspended company that resumed trading is Polar Petroleum Corp. (OTCMKTS:POLR) – also currently on the grey market, who are now nearly 90% down from the price levels when the suspension hit.