Not true..
Wrong; it is true. IWMSF is a gray market security, not traded on any exchange; that's why there's no spreads, no volume figures, you can't call it up on yahoo; it's off-market between brokers, execution is said to be shoddy, as the efficiencies of a market is missing.
I thought IWMSF might be the bulletin board symbol, so I called the company. They advised me NOT to buy under that symbol; they told me about the gray market and later e-mailed me (they call it IWMIF... I guess you can add that to "IWMSF, IW.TO, T.IW, V.IW... etc"):
"Hello Sl,
An OTC-BB Compliance officer re: the supposed trades on
the OTC-BB has confirmed that Infowave is not on the BB.
However, he said that NASD brokers have a
reporting obligation anytime they trade a security; the reporting system requires that the security has a trading symbol (Infowave's is "IWMIF"). The reporting system makes it look like there was volume in the security. That information is sold to information agencies who then
publish it -- some broker who doesn't know how the system works may mistakenly assume that the trade was on the BB.
EXAMPLE: A shareholder walks into his Merrill Lynch office and asks a stock broker find a buyer for 1,000 shares of Infowave. The broker makes a few calls, finds a buyer, and privately places the 1,000 shares. The broker than has to report the shares via the NASD reporting system as the sale of 1,000 shares of IWMIF, that information is sold to information agencies and published. The reported sale is published similarly to an OTC-BB sale, so absent research, anyone looking at the data could conclude that the sale was via the OTC-BB rather than via a private placement facilitated by a licensed NASD broker.
Grant Prenevost
Investor Relations
800-444-9214"
ed-So with such uncertainty over the actual trading, is it any wonder IW hasn't risen further? |
