Good Evening Taurus!
I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to address some of the points you made in your last few posts. Before I comment though, I wanted to tell you that I really enjoy reading the information you always seem to dig up. Please don't stop doing that as I feel it adds so much more to the understanding that people can gain about their investment - me in particular.<gg>
That said, here goes . . .
The folks here are anticipating the " first to market " advantage we currently hold, if they ever get their web site up and running.
In his last e-mail that was posted on the thread, Mr. Chu has said that the site will be up near the end of this week. I don't know about other investors, but I plan on giving him a few days grace period on this self imposed deadline. Suffice to say that I will be happy to see it operational sometime next week.
We haven't even been given assurance they have secured the 10 Million yet either.
I called the Company's IR person about this issue today. She informed me that the company has already received the bulk of the monies from the private placement. She also told me that they are expecting the legal departments of the firms who are outstanding to finish processing the papers soon. Given the volatility of the past few days, I'm sure that everyone involved wants to make sure that they have crossed the T's and dotted the i's. One last thing she mentioned was that they do not plan on issuing a Press Release until they have all of the money in their account.
I can't believe they only recently hired their people to upgrade these sites and put the SEG site in service. Maybe they were waiting for the secured funds,eh?
I think Mr. Chu's words were to the effect that they just hired more team members to help get the job done. I also think he made mention of getting all three sites completed. I'm sure that the SEG site was already well underway. To further support this belief, I recently asked and was told that they are in the process of Beta testing their SEG site now, and it was being prepared for a soft opening very soon. Note: I also plan to cut them some slack if there are some bugs that they have to work out for awhile. After all, I can't recall coming across a site that was functioning or designed perfectly from the get go.
CPT are going for the average retail investor from what I can gather, and offer no banking services.
You are correct that the portal will be open all retail investors. However, if you happen to have been sent a copy of their investor kit, it states on the second page of the brochure that . . . "They will offer institutional account program for large volume transactions." In addition, I feel that there is no reason to assume that affluent investors will not also be using this service. After all, once I make my small fortune from investing in the stock market, I plan to use this portal. <VBG> The longer term outlook for SEG is to move into offering other financial products as well. I'm not sure if banking (in the traditional sense) is one of these services, but I think that given the financial focus of this portal that that idea is not too far fetched.
Smaller caps appreciated across the board today, but CPT did not participate.
That is true for today, but don't forget that yesterday the stock price rose 35 %. That said, I don't look at this as a day to day step up in price. I look at it as a medium term investment that will show stellar returns.
Some more thoughts . . .
From one of the versions of today's HSBC and Merrill Lynch press release . . .
HSBC and Merrill will initially target the U.K. later this year, to be followed by Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong and Japan next year. They expect to launch in 21 countries within the next four years.
When Keith and I were in Vancouver to interview Mr. Chu, he mentioned that his time line for completing his expansion plans was two years. Within these two years, he said that he plans to have signed a total of 40 Stock Exchanges for the portal. As I mentioned earlier, I know that Mr. Chu is planning to have the Hong Kong market turn live as a soft opening of the site. When all the bugs have been worked out he will be adding more exchanges to the portal.
Today, Merrill and HSBC stated that they are hoping to have their site go live sometime later this year. SEG's will go live in a few days. Merrill and HSBC have stated that they will have 21 countries on line in four years. SEG will have 40 exchanges up in two years - double the number live in half the time! Even though these firms are giants in the industry, there is a lot to be said for SEG's 'First to Market' and 'Speed of Execution' advantage.
Mr. Chu also made it very clear that he plans to undertake an aggressive advertising campaign to get the SEG name in front of the potential clients who would be inclined to use this service.
Yup, we should have expected competition to pop up. But my take on it is that I am not worried because when the competition does happen, it will take place much later in the year, and even then their expansion plans are not nearly as aggressive or as rapid as SEG's are. I always try to remember that it is a big market out there and I have faith that Mr. Chu knows exactly where he is taking SEG and what has to be done to make it a success.
Crazy Canuck |
