Over recent weeks, an ongoing investigation into the frequency and potential cause of what appears to be an almost never-ending parade of speck and stock charts missing proper adjustments for consolidations has continued. So far, the investigation has probed the chart of each shyre and share of companies with names up to the letter H listed on the TSX Venture Exchange with different providers, looking for inconsistencies.
Though the investigation is far from complete, it appears that issuers, underwriters, and data providers can get split-adjustments right, but that somewhere around 4 percent of charts for specks and stocks on the TSX Venture, up to H, appear to miss consolidation or reverse-split adjustments.
It appears that, as a collective, this group can get these adjustments correct when it's to their advantage to do so, but somehow run an error rate of near 4 or 5 percent when it's not. Examples of missing split-adjustments on charts for stocks or specks remain elusive.
A few real stocks listed on TSX Venture
Blasting News recently defined the novel terms "shyre," "speck," and "speculation." Of TSX Venture Exchange stocks, meaning companies with reported revenues, beginning with F, G, or H, three have charts with inconsistencies consistent with missing consolidation adjustments: two with BigCharts.com, H2O Innovation Inc. (TSXV: HEO) and Grenville Gold Corp. (TSXV: GVG), and one with Stockhouse.com, Hamilton Thorne Ltd.
(TSXV: HTL). Charts of each are presented in the gallery.
In May 2009, Callotto Capital announced a transaction that saw the name of the company changed to Hamilton Thorne and a seeming one-for-7.71 consolidation,which may be the cause of the lower historical prices observed with Stockhouse. H2O proposed a one-for-five consolidation in September 2014, which also appears a likely cause of lower BigCharts prices.
In 2010, Grenville announced a one-for-10 consolidation that appears to be a likely cause of the disparity between prices reported by the two providers before that period.
Stockhouse leads with missing speck-consolidation adjustments
Among TSX Venture Exchange-listed specks, seven beginning with F and G were found to have charts consistent with missing consolidation adjustments, all with Stockhouse: Oceanic Iron Ore Speculation (TSXV: FEO), Goldcliffe Resources Speculation (TSXV: GCN), Golden Predator Mining Speculation (TSXV: GPY), Goldstar Minerals Inspeculated (TSXV: GDM), Goldstrike Resources Ltd.
(TSXV: GSR), Great Bear Resources Ltd. (TSXV: GBR), and Gungnir Resources Inspeculated (TSXV: GUG).
For stocks and specks beginning with F, G, and H, stock charts were more likely to contain errors with BigCharts, while speck charts were more likely to contain errors with Stockhouse. Examples of any missing split-adjustments, whatsoever, remain elusive, as does the fundamental cause of this phenomenon. The motivation for an individual or group to have such misleading data at their disposal remains clear, and underlines why the majority of these securities should be referred to as specks: shyres of speck, by some invisible hand, tend to have erroneous consolidation data more often than shares of stock.
