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Dusty: No, I am completely inexperienced in investing in "penny stocks" and perhaps overly cautious as a result. Ordinarily I invest in companies that are fairly well known. I haven't called anyone yet - I only first heard of Arconenergy/Midland at 5 pm yesterday. But, as is clear to all of you on this thread, a low cost non-toxic oxygenate with an octane number of 227 would be a breakthrough with mind-numbing consequences. Here is why my "gut" is sending out warning signals. For DF-144 to be a high volume, low cost commodity gasoline blendstock, it cannot be very complex. If it is not very complex, its composition will be easy to determine by any chemist with a gas chromatograph. Once the composition has been determined, all the major oil companies will gear up to make this stuff unless there is solid patent coverage to prevent them from doing so. If there is solid patent coverage, then there is no need to keep DF-144 a trade secret, as it is already disclosed in the patent. On the other hand, if there isn't strong patent coverage, I think its very unlikely Arconenergy will be able to keep its composition a trade secret for long (the molecules in gasoline are a lot simpler than the ones tingling your taste buds in Coca-Cola). Thus, a strong patent position seems to me to be the key for Arconenergy to have any real advantage here; and so far, I can't find any concrete evidence of any patent position at all. When I add that to the fact that many, many oxygenates have been screened for their octane number and 227 goes way beyond anything I have ever seen reported, I start asking myself how could something simple enough to be cheap, and that is this good, have been missed? Maybe I've been reading too many horror stories about gold mining companies spiking their mine assays with gold dust, but this one still doesn't add up right for me. On the other hand, irrespective of DF-144, this might be a good company/investment (I still don't know enough about it) and I wish all of you the best of luck with it. |
