>>107553565I believe that the stock is being manipulated.
There’s a form of the securities fraud known as naked short selling that is becoming very popular and lucrative to the market makers that practice it. It is known as “CELLAR BOXING” and it has to do with the fact that the NASD and the SEC had to arbitrarily set a minimum level at which a stock can trade. This level was set at $.0001 or one-one hundredth of a penny.
This level is appropriately referred to as “the CELLAR”. This $.0001 level can be used as a "backstop" for all kinds of market maker and naked short selling manipulations.
“CELLAR BOXING” has been one of the security frauds du jour since 1999 when the market went to a “decimalization” basis. In the pre-decimalization days the minimum market spread for most stocks was set at 1/8th of a dollar and the market makers were guaranteed a healthy “spread”.
Since decimalization came into effect, those one-eighth of a dollar spreads now are often only a penny as you can see in Microsoft’s quote throughout the day. Where did the unscrupulous MMs go to make up for all of this lost income?
They headed "south" to the OTCBB and Pink Sheets where the protective effects from naked short selling like Rule 10-a, and NASD Rules 3350, 3360, and 3370 are nonexistent.
The unique aspect of needing an arbitrary “CELLAR” level is that the lowest possible incremental gain above this CELLAR level represents a 100% spread available to MMs making a market in these securities.
