Virtus Oil and Gas Corp. f/k/a Curry Gold Corp (OTCBB:VOIL) With a Wild Bounce
So, you’re looking through the OTC Markets, and you’re trying to find a decent stock. Obviously you don’t want to put your money in an illiquid ticker, so you’re looking at some of the more actively traded companies. Inevitably, you will stumble upon Virtus Oil and Gas Corp. f/k/a Curry Gold Corp (OTCBB:VOIL) because it has registered some impressive volumes over the last few months.
Of course, you’re not willing to put your money on the line before doing some research, and you start digging around. Your starting point is the chart and, let’s not beat about the bush, it’s a complete nightmare. The ticker dropped from its 52-week high of $2.24 to just $0.73 in a matter of less than two months. It even hit an intraday low of $0.65 during Tuesday’s session.
“Quite a lot of money was lost on this”, you’re thinking, and you start wondering why.
A few more minutes’ worth of research reveals that VOIL was targeted by a rather huge paid pump campaign that lasted for months. After some more digging around you find out that touting was done through plenty of landing pages, hard mailer brochures, emails, and unsolicited phone calls from people in the Philippines.
At this point, many of you might be running for the hills, but some investors didn’t seem bothered at all during yesterday’s session. Despite the fact that the pump appears to be over, and despite the lack of any catalysts that could have predicted a surge, VOIL bounced yesterday, added a healthy 30% to its value, and closed the session at $0.95 per share. This means that its market cap is once again hovering precariously close to the $50 million mark.
We’ve covered the stock more than a few times over the last few months and we’ve mentioned time and again that this sort of valuation isn’t really in line with the company’s operations at the moment. Even if you do believe in VOIL‘s future for some reason, the fact that yesterday’s jump occurred seemingly out of thin air should be enough of a red flag for you.
Plenty of people have already lost considerable amounts of money, and if you don’t tread carefully, you might join their not-so-exclusive club. The really frustrating thing is that all this was avoidable.
People who did their research and due diligence knew from the very beginning that the pumpers are receiving a lot of money to tout a company that has yet to generate its first revenues. They also knew that back in 2009 a huge amount of shares (18.2 million to be precise) was sold for just $13,000.
The investors who knew all this were aware of the fact that VOIL is never going to reach the lofty price targets and acted accordingly. The ones who didn’t are quite angry right now. And rightly so.
The promotional campaign lasted for a while and the enthusiasm sucked in quite a lot of people. The ones who were aware of what’s going on tried to raise the alarm through the message boards and social networks. We also tried to present the facts.
The SEC, however, slept through the whole thing and decided that action was not necessary. The results are now in.
About an hour after today’s opening bell, VOIL is sitting at $0.915 (3.16% in the red).
