Dr. Epstein,
Your argument essentially is that the company's past doesn't matter and Zicam is a great product.
Well, in terms of launching a product, financial resources do matter, and GUMM's don't amount to much. Over its history, all GUMM has shown is a capacity to lose money. To throw Apple and Lucent into the same sentence with GUMM is, well, plainly ridiculous. These are both multi-billion companies. Apple's turnaround also came on the heels of an incredible installed base, brand loyalty, and a balance sheet filled with about a $1 billion net of debt.
And I don't see how you can make any comments at all about Zicam except maybe "sounds interesting," since there's nothing to research about it. I repeat, if you're really a doctor, you should be ashamed to get onto an online forum where people may think your opinion is worth something when it simply can't be because there is no published clinical evidence to support this product and thus no way for you to know anything important about it. Give me a list of articles from peer-reviewed journals that specifically support Zicam. I would be most happy to read them and evaluate it.
To my knowledge, you could fish out a bunch of work by Gwaltney at UVA and others on the common cold and nose spray applications. You can even find work by Quigley's Godfrey looking into the possible ways that Cold-Eeze works. All of this would provide some sense of the biology and the science. None would tell you anything about Zicam. My reading of the doctor's testimonials is that they have no experience with Zicam and are merely speaking in general. In other words, they don't know anything more than you do.
The Bengalus quote would be this: "Zicam is an alleged treatment for the common cold that's something like a nasal spray version of Cold-Eeze. It's being promoted by a tiny Arizona company with a terrible track record, no recent profits, tiny sales, and few financial resources. There's no published clinical research on Zicam, making it impossible for any investor to have any idea whether the product works as billed. GUMM stock is being promoted by a small investment house called GunnAllen which has hyped the stock in the past. This appears close to a no-brainer short sell if you can get the shares. The risks include an already high-level of short interest; presumably a strong hold on part of the float by GunnAllen and its investors; and the chance that some major media outlet is irresponsible enough to profile the product based on the limited information currently available."
People can make their investment decisions based on whatever they like. But my reading of this thread suggests that too many people here are investing on hype and hope. If that's the case, more than likely you will lose money. Sometimes you get lucky, but usually not.
BTW, I'm not short. I haven't found shares to borrow. But I'll keep trying. |
