LOKL anyone spot the dodgy germans on HC???Cdchi1Lame as a...

LOKL anyone spot the dodgy germans on HC???

Cdchi1

Lame as a limping goose The mystery behind the farcical rally in the share price of Bougainville Copper, an empty shell of a company that this week hit highs of 85¢- more than double its price two weeks ago - has been solved.

It turns out a German stock spruiker by the name of Sven Lorenz has been telling his newsletter subscribers the massive Panguna gold and copper mine on Bougainville Island, which has gone to wrack and ruin since its closure due to the country's civil war in 1989, would be re-opened following elections in Papua New Guinea later this year.

It might be a story only a "one-legged goose" would believe, as an Australian adviser to the Papua New Guinea government told the Weekend AFR, but that didn't stop subscribers to Lorenz's Global Profit Hunter newsletter piling into the stock - and into Australian chat rooms.

It seems bored day traders were only too happy to buy the story, although it is not clear what exactly they thought they would miss out on.

As reported in Time magazine at about the same time as Lorenz issued his recommendation, Panguna is occupied by the rebel army of Francis Ona and, according to people familiar with the site, is little more than a hole in the ground full of scrapped machinery.

Bougainville Copper has no access to the site and is trying to offload it.

It is unlikely that there will be a restart any time soon as no serious mining group will consider investing in it while the locals continue to carry firearms.

Lorenz's website makes for interesting reading.

He is also convinced there are oil reserves under the tiny UK territory of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina.

The reserves are big enough to solve the West's oil crisis, he says. That, he writes, was the real reason for the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina in 1982.

ASX-listed Global Petroleum, which has interests in the Falklands, has also enjoyed something of a run of late.

It surged more than 300 per cent from 13¢ to 56¢ last year.