Richardz, what is the point of shooting the messenger.
Livewire is one of the more popular finance websites in Australia, and there is no doubt that many Phoslock shareholders would have ended up stumbling across the video even if Faraday hadn't posted it here.
Some of those holders would have then likely decided to sell, anticipating that it would probably be only a matter of time before other shareholders found the article and initiated the same action.
This would have in turn led to a dip in the share price, and it wouldn't have been too long before a puzzled shareholder posed a question here as to the cause of the weakness in the share price. Of course, a holder in the know would have then posted the link to the Livewire video in response. It is really inevitable that content featuring this stock on mainstream finance websites is going to make its way to the forum eventually.
One point relating to this subject that I think is worth raising is that only a few hours after that video was published yesterday, another piece mentioning Phoslock was published on the same site, listing the top performing stocks that were tipped in the Livewire stock picking contest at the start of the year. Phoslock came in at no. 3.
Intriguingly, the same article notes that the stocks that currently sit in first and second place- Avita Medical and Isignthis- had both previously been spruiked by pundits on the Livewire website.
It is a different story for Phoslock. Indeed, the commentary from Statler and Waldorf yesterday was the first time that there had been any analysis of the company at all on that website (the stock has been occasionally mentioned in passing a few times on the site).
Given that Livewire is a mainstream Australian finance website, the fact that prior to yesterday no analyst had ever commneted on the company on the website suggests that even today the stock is still somewhat under the radar. Bear in mind that so far the stock is already up around 290%this year, despite the limited exposure in the Australian financial media.
So counter intuitively, I think that video yesterday might prove to be more positive than negative over the long run. All publicity is good publicity, and the video might bring the stock to the attention of other analysts who might not take such a negative view of the company.
Over the years as a shareholder in this company, I have gotten the impression that the management of Phoslock are somewhat prickly characters, and sensitive to negative commentary about the company. Perhaps this is one reason as to why the stock prove to be such a strong performer.
My suspicion is that hostile commentary such as the kind we saw on that video yesterday tends to fire up the management, driving them to push the company to ever greater heights to prove the doubters wrong.
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