Stock Market ← Reverse Merger & SPAC Blog

Market Surges But Microcaps Still Struggle – Let’s Give Everyone Short Form Registration

Mar

2013

Of course we are all happy that the stock market has been hitting new highs this past week. It has been a long road back from 2009 when the market had less than half its current value. The M&A market is awake, lots of large financings taking place, and even though the economy is not ...

Dow Hits New High

Mar

2013

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has beaten the previous record high of 14,198.10 set in October 2007. That’s a pretty cool thing. If only we felt as positive and optimistic as we did in October 2007, but then again that’s just when things started getting bad but we didn’t know that was coming. The good ...

Can Seasoning Restrictions Be Adjusted?

Mar

2013

I remain determined in my quest for the major stock exchanges to consider some alterations to the reverse merger “seasoning” requirements instituted in November 2011. As we know, these restrictions were added primarily in response to allegations of fraud in a number of Chinese companies that went public through reverse mergers. The rules add a ...

More on Dow Jones as it Flirts With All-time High

Feb

2013

On October 9, 2007, most of us in the finance world were riding pretty darn high. We had watched a frothy market runup that had been unprecedented. On that day, the Dow Jones hit its still all time high of 14,164. From there it rode its way all the way down to the 6000s range ...

Dow Jones Hits Five Year High

Jan

2013

Yes the economy keeps hobbling along. But the stock market has been very strong. The bellwether Dow Jones industrial average of 30 large cap stocks hit a five year high the other day, highest it’s been since Halloween of 2007. My 22-year old was still in high school, my 10-year old in kindergarten. That’s just ...

Fourth Quarter Good for Small Company Financing

Jan

2013

According to the DealFlow Report, the fourth quarter of 2012 saw a nice uptick in financing activities for smallcap companies. Reverse mergers were down, but in general people are feeling good and more financings are getting done for small public companies. Jefferies (which is being sold to Leucadia National), JMP, Piper Jaffray, Cowen & Co. ...

Decimalization Issue Not Dead

Dec

2012

We learn from The DealFlow Report that the SEC has scheduled a roundtable on the issue of decimalization of stock prices, which may include discussion of possible pilot programs to try different plans to increase “tick sizes” between bid and ask prices in the markets. The Jumpstart our Business Startups (JOBS) Act required the SEC ...

The (Good?) Old Days Part VI – Speech Recognition

Nov

2012

As I try to be slightly ahead of the curve I am here to say that much is about to change in the world of technology in the 10 or so years to come. Namely: thanks in part to Apple’s dive into the speech recognition software world with the introduction of Siri in iPhones, I think ...

PIPEs and Financings Rise in Third Quarter

Oct

2012

The third quarter of 2012 is looking nicely better for those helping small businesses raise money. According to the DealFlow Report, public companies raised over $11 billion in the quarter through private offerings. This is up from last year, and apparently you have to go back to 2008 to have such a good third quarter. ...

Analysis of New Reg D End of Solicitation Ban Rules: Part IV

Sep

2012

The last factor the SEC’s rule proposal ending the ban on general solicitation in Regulation D offerings suggests that issuers consider in verifying someone’s status as an accredited investor is the nature of the offering. What they mean by this is how you go about soliciting investors. For example, the proposal states, if you look for investors in ...