CGCOC yahoo board is still there. Here's something I got from it:
Delisted Commerce Group's stock now dealt over counter
By Kathleen Gallagher
of the Journal Sentinel staff
April 9, 1999
Commerce Group Corp. shares, which were booted off the Nasdaq National Market last week, are now trading over the counter.
The struggling Milwaukee company was delisted by Nasdaq last week because it didn't meet the electronic market's bid price minimum of $1.
Except for one brief spurt in October, Commerce Group shares had been trading below $1 since June. They jumped 414% to $1.688 on Jan. 29 when the company said it would change the name of an inactive subsidiary to Ecomm and try to develop a Web portal business with an Irvine, Calif., company, Interactive Business Channel Inc.
Despite the change in the status of the stock, Commerce Group is "moving forward" with the Web portal business, says John E. Machulak, an attorney for the company.
Commerce Group, which pulls about 500 ounces a month of gold out of a mine in El Salvador that it has owned for more than 20 years, lost seven cents a share in the first six months of its most recent fiscal year.
Commerce Group's stock has traded sporadically since its shares left Nasdaq on March 31. It traded between $1.25 and 75 cents Thursday, on volume of 9,900 shares, said Stephen S. Wien, at Wien Securities Corp. in Jersey City, N.J.
The last sale Thursday was for 87.5 cents, Wien said. Wien's firm is one of the main market makers in Commerce Group stock.
Wien says there are currently between three and six brokerage firms making a market in Commerce Group stock.
Investors can go to any broker to buy or sell shares. But until the shares get get listed on the OTC Bulletin Board, brokers have a more difficult time making a trade happen.
To trade the stock, a broker has to call three different firms listed in the "pink sheets," a list of stocks and quotes that's distributed by the National Quotation Bureau LLC once a week.
"It's time-consuming," Wien said.
The OTC bulletin board, on the other hand, allows brokers to look up electronic real-time quotes, last-sale prices and volume. It is operated by the National Association of Securities Dealers, but is not associated with the Nasdaq market. There are no listing requirements for the OTC bulletin board.
Wien filed for Commerce Group to go on the OTC bulletin board last week, and he expects to either receive approval today or be asked to supply more information. An NASD spokesman confirmed Thursday that the application had been received.
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