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What’s up with Russ Whitney’s stock?

Russ Whitney runs a publicly-traded company that goes by the stock symbol RUSS and is publicly traded on the Over The Counter Bulletin Board. One analyst, American Bulls, said Whitney’s stock had fallen 56.57% since 2/19/04. Yahoo says the market cap is about $20 million. Market cap is the share price multiplied by the total number of shares in existence. If it currently is $20 million, it must have been around $20 million ÷ (100% - 56.57% = 43.43%) = $46 million before the 56.57% drop. That’s $46 million - $20 million = a $26 million loss in value. Ouch!
A Whitney news release says they lost $12 million in July, August and September of 2004. In the same period in 2003, they lost $1.5 million. Jeez! They have a cumulative net loss for their entire existence plus a negative net worth according to their SEC filings. (You can see their SEC filings at the SEC’s EDGAR Web site. Do a company search and type in “Whitney Information Network.” Leave off the “Inc.”) The Whitney news release says you should not focus on the loss, rather you should focus on the cash on hand. That’s not much comfort. It dropped by $2.1 million in the July-August-September, 2004 period as well. Don’t successful companies actually have to make a profit at some point?
Whitney says his competitors are Apollo Group and Devry. Their stocks have not fallen indicating this is not an industry trend.
The bid and asked quotes to buy or sell Whitney’s stock were for quantities of 500. (note the “x 500” in the bid and ask figures at Yahoo’s analysis of RUSS). This is apparently a decision of the stock market guys who are willing to trade in this stock. Normally, there is no “x500” which implies the trader would be willing to buy more than 500.
The average daily volume of shares traded in the last three months (late 2004) was around 3,000 shares. Now it’s triple that. If I understand Whitney’s SEC filings correctly, most shares are owned by people associated with the company. If so, it is interesting that they are selling in much greater quantities than before while the price is falling. Generally, stock market investors do not like to sell when a price is falling.
On January 6, 2005, the trading volume of RUSS was zero on four of the last five days and only 100 shares on the other. I am told this is extremely strange for a publicly-traded company. If it is a publicly traded company, there should be daily public trading.
I am not sure what all this means, but I suspect Russ may have to turn in his financial genius secret decoder ring.
If anyone has any additional information on this I would be interested in hearing it.
Thanks,
John T. Reed
Copyright 2004 by John T. Reed
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CONSUMER WARNING NOTICE: I recently saw Russ Whitney on a late night TV infomercial and then attended one of his "free" seminars. Unfortunately I believed all of their LIES and FRAUDULENT CLAIMS and I paid thousands of dollars to go to his "training camps". Needless to say I was clearly ripped off, cheated and lied to by Russ Whitney and his employees (band of thieves). My mistake was not searching the Internet to find out more about Russ Whitney and his company's HORRIBLE reputation for fraud, deception and illegal activities. Had I searched online I would have found out about THOUSANDS of customers being cheated, HUNDREDS of investigations by the Attorney General into the fraud of Russ Whitney and his company's, and that Russ Whitney himself is a CONVICTED VIOLENT FELON and spent years in PRISON. I saved the cached pages from the major search engines of the John Reed lawsuit with Russell Whitney and the TRUTH and FACTS that Reed discovered during his investigation of Whitney. I am posting this information on real estate discussion boards so other people do NOT get cheated and ripped off like I did.