Traders are their own worst enemy 9 times out of 10, and with TECO I would say it's 9.9 out of 10 at this point.
I keep telling people to focus on the price action and not the PR's because the only PR's that matter are the one's that talk about how much oil is coming out or about to come out of the ground. By the time those PR's come out the price is already moving.
But no, people keep trying to extrapolate too much out of a PR and then get disappointed when because they seem to have not yet figured out that management is fighting a war of words against the bears.
It is simple playground warfare. When you are a small guy getting picked on by the big guy you make yourself as menacing as possible. Make them think you know karate, have a big brother that will whip the bullies ass, that you have a knife in your back pocket, anything to make them think twice.
People complain that Treaty isn't doing this, is behind on that, blah blah blah. Do you know where they would be right now if instead of saying they could hit 1,000 bpd by mid year that they really thought that they would have zero oil production until August? And then in August they might have roughly 250 bpd? Would you even be invested if that's what they told us last year? Do you know what the bears would have done to this stock? They would have absolutely bombed Treaty back into the stone age.
I doubt this stock would even hold a penny if they erred towards a timid and lackluster estimate. Do you think they would have gotten funding for the Woodridge leases? For the Shelby leases? Or gotten SLB and Tucker involved if they said back in Q4 2011, "gee guys, I would rather underestimate and overperform so I'm going to tell the world that not a single drop of oil will flow until late next year."
Investing, and particularly penny stock investing in start up E&P plays, let alone running a start up E&P takes huge brass balls.
In the book, The Big Rich, the story about the big 4 Texas oil families those guys were so full of bullshit, missed multiple deadlines, had debt piled upon debt upon debt, had so many dry holes, but not once did they walk around like their shit didn't stink. Perception absolutely matters, and even if it is bluffing 90% of the time that 10% chance is what keeps the enemies thinking twice.
Treaty's PR strategy is to talk big and think big, even if they can only live up to the hype one piece at a time one day at a time. Look at their market cap, it's about 30 million bucks in pennyland. That is bigger than some small caps E&P plays.
I just exited out of WGAS this week. It's a timid little company slowly plodding along and that's why it's only a 2 million dollar market cap and probably about to drop back to 1 million.
I am not here in pennyland to play it safe. I am here to swing for the fences and therefore I want a company who thinks big, talks big, because they plan on being big. So what if they miss a deadline or two here or there, that's the price of playing the pennies. If you want "safe" buy a diversified portfolio and enjoy your +/- 2% performance against the S&P each year. I am looking for them to hit 1,000 bpd by end of year to early next year even with setbacks along the way. Even if it takes until next summer to play out I will still be a millionaire many times over.
Forget the PR's, to hell with the PR's, they mean diddley squat unless it reports a BPD number materially higher than the previous one and by that time I guaranty you that the price has already moved before it hit the wires.
