Canadian CANNAINVESTOR Magazine October 2017 | Page 246

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For greater clarity this article and its contents is not in any way intended as, nor should be confused with, technical disclosure, nor was this article reviewed by a Qualified Person. Statements disclosed in the Oilprice.com article contain material which is overly promotional and potentially misleading, does not meet the scientific and technical disclosure requirements of Canadian securities legislation including National Instrument 43-101, and was not prepared by or approved by a Qualified Person and should not be relied upon. The exploration potential disclosed in the piece is conceptual in nature and there is no certainty that ongoing exploration will yield positive results.”

This news release continues with specific retractions and it is truly worth a read side by side with the paid advertising that is referencing.

The purpose of this case study is to provide a real example that is current of how paid promotional material can impact investors as evidenced by the trading volume, change in share price, and the IIROC halt.

This legal marijuana and hemp industry has its fair share of paid promoters. Liberty Leaf Holdings (CSE:LIB) appears as a stand alone case study in this issue. A well known promoter issued multiple pieces on LIB in the latter part of 2016 and into January 2017. The share price increased from $0.06 to a high of $0.32 during this advertising period. Unlike in the KG example, the first sentence of the piece for LIB was “Liberty Leaf (LIB.C) is officially a sponsor …, and I’ll be helping them as a market consultant.” That upfront disclosure is a key differentiator and the content in the LIB pieces. Once this promotional period ended, the share price over time retreated to a low of $0.08.

Needless to say, LIB did not request coverage in our publication (referring to its case study) nor were we compensated in any manner whatsoever for its content or inclusion. A more recent example can be found when trading was halted on PUF Ventures Inc (CSE:PUF; OTC:PUFXF) and the company had to retract misleading statements it had made in a news release earlier that day.

Posters on bulletin boards and social media are often influencers (promoters) or otherwise motivated for the share price to move off of its present trajectory and volume. They will post “news coming” with a bullish opinion associated with that OR perhaps will post sour comments with reckless and immature remarks such as “scam” or “#paperparty” etc. There are even imposter CannaInvestor posters out there … if it is a toad, frog, crab, rooster etc … it is not the real CannaInvestor. Ignore and Block the imposters – it is truly that simple.

Always be apprehensive of posters who claim to have spoken directly with companies because if they did and the information was public then the company would issue a release disclosing that information. Otherwise you are left with two possibilities and one is more likely than the other. Either the poster is lying or the company is passing along confidential material information to a third party that is not entitled to that information and clearly cannot be trusted with it. 99.9 out of 100 times it is the poster and not the company. Be mindful of social media posters with multiple accounts and offer overly bearish or bullish comments and/or chose user names intentionally identical or similar to trusted brand names.