Equity.Guru is go

On the eighth day, God had a ciggie.

What’s up, stockmarket fans. Equity.Guru, as of today, is official. If you’ve been creeping about during out dry run, thanks for testing it out. If you’re brand new, welcome aboard.

Bookmark it, or join the mailing list, so you don’t miss what’s coming.

So who am I? I’m Chris Parry.

You may recall me from such classics as ‘the guy from Stockhouse who swears too much’ and ‘that guy who talks about weed companies but doesn’t smoke the stuff’. You may have seen my words over the years in The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, Stuff, FHM, Rolling Stone, the Hollywood Reporter, the National Enquirer, Playboy, IFC TV, eFilmCritic.com, and before that, MrSkin.com (yes, one of my first paid jobs was being paid to write movie reviews based around who got naked and when – best job I ever had, if I’m honest).

I am also the player to be named later, the salter of the earth, the flinger of forearm shivers and the boardroom bon vivant. At least that’s what it says on my business card.

Side note: The back of my business card no longer has the ‘colour in your own tattoos on Henry Rollins’ game, as too many old mining execs looked at me all puzzled and said, ‘who’s Henry Rollins?’

I write about public companies, and I like to think I can tell sushi from shinola. Sometimes I write about companies that have paid for my attention, sometimes I write about companies jus’ cuz.

When companies pay me for my attention, they don’t automatically earn my favour. The first words spoken by me to a CEO when I’m engaged as a consulting journalist are:

1) Don’t lie to me. Ever. Because I’ll talk about it publicly.

2) I’m going to hurt your company at first, because I’m going to write about the things that aren’t in your investor presentation, that you haven’t seen to yet. Debt? Large clumps of stock about to go free trading? Missed projections? It all comes out..

3) When you fix the things you’d prefer I didn’t talk about, then and only then can I tell people I like your business.

4) I’ll only say I like your business if I actually do.

5) I’ll never tell someone to buy, nor sell. But I’ll say if I’m buying, or selling.

I go by the Jerry Maguire business model. Less clients, better service, over deliver, always be honest. This guys gets it.

In the newspaper world, they call this directed content, or native content, but they always always always do it wrong. They take money to write nice things because they really need the money, and that just sells credibility down a hole.

I don’t. I’m allowed to be fierce. I can be brutal. And I have to be, because that’s the only way it’ll mean anything if I later write something nice.

When I put word out that I was starting something new, I didn’t have to explain why, and didn’t have to go trawling for sponsors. People in the industry leapt in to support the new outlet, and the sponsors literally came to me. In fact, all of my pre-launch sponsorship packages are sold, as of now, and not only did they go from first contact to signed deals within a week, before we even launched the site, but they all did 18-month deals rather than the traditional four month ‘pre-free trading promotion’ range, because they’re all building companies, not ticker symbols.

And that’s the sort of company I want to be down with.

Over the past few months, I’ve had advice, investment offers, and assistance from a lot of people who I like and trust in this business, among them CEO.CA’s Tommy Humphrey’s, Justus Parmar of The Parmar Group, Tarik and Mo Elsaghir from Cedarpoint Capital and The President’s Club, Equities.com’s Steve Kanaval, Peter Epstein at EpsteinResearch.com, Peter Kletas from PJK and Associates, and others who prefer to be unnamed background players or whose base touching I’ve not yet got to (Deslaurier Brothers, Bay and Howe, Cambridge House, Intrynsync, Prodigy, Core Capital Partners; next week is wide open).

Those early sponsorships have ensured Equity.Guru opens with its budget covered for the rest of 2016, so now I can focus on building new products, growing readership, and doing right by both the audience and those who wish to be in front of that audience.

And that seems to be hitting an audience, even before we officially launched. In fact, early site traffic has been multiplying, day by day, at a rate we didn’t expect. Now that we’re actually opening the site to search bots and SEOing up the back end, I expect we’re going to be hitting our quarterly reader numbers quick.

Anyone who invests in the Canadian markets knows what’s broken in this business, and anyone on the financing side knows what’s broken when it comes to finding an investor audience. I aim to fix both of those problems and help the two sides be what the other side is looking for. I’m also planning to make this site one in which NEW investors are forged by bringing information in a multi-platform format, and in a way that is easy to read, understand, and act upon. Hipsters, millennials, Maserati new riche, hell – I’ve even got plans for a Chinese language version of the site, and for content partnerships in mainstream media.

We’re starting the show with Equitas Resources (EQT.V), Nano One Materials (NNO.V) and Veritas Pharmaceuticals (VRT.C), and I’m rolling over my existing consulting deals with Golden Leaf Holdings (GLH.C) and Laguna Blends (LAG.C). I’m proud of that lineup, as they’re all small scrappers with an opportunity that’s worth exploring, with people I trust at the wheel, and share prices that are low enough for multi-bagger potential.

Equitas fell on its head with a nickel play that didn’t hit the expected drill results, but has pivoted into a small existing gold producer in Brazil – a move that has yet to be wired into its oversold share price, even though it puts them into the on-trend metal of the monent.

Veritas is a mostly unknown cannabis research play with amazing academia partners and a plan that is low cost, with a high chance of take out. More on that soon.

Nano One has a technology to get cobalt out of the rechargeable battery tech game, making said batteries cheaper, more efficient, and with less need to rely on susceptible supply chains. And they’re patenting the hell out of it, for other uses in other industries.

Golden Leaf is a renowned backwards stock running off a company in the US cannabis oil space that is making big revenues, has a filthy large market, dominates in two states, has established grey-hair management, has raised a bunch of cash, and yet still faces downward pressure on their share price. I think it’s coiled for a run.

Laguna Blends is an affiliate marketing focused protein-coffee play that has had a slow start and missed on a lot of its timelines but, still, has a truly amazing coffee product that I drink every day by choice, some very connected MLM folks on the board, and a CEO that is committing his own cash in a big way. It’s taken them a long time to launch, but launch they have and the stock has yet to take note.

See a theme here? Oversold, worked through the ripples, ready to get on with it and starting to move. A smart investor doesn’t look for what’s risen, they look for what’s overlooked, been broken and reassembled, and is now ready to pop.

I don’t know if any of these companies will pop. I do know they’re all undervalued and finally achieving what they set out to achieve, just as a host of companies I’ve worked with before, like Supreme Pharmaceuticals (SL.C), Naturally Splendid (NSP.V). Integra Gold (IGC.V) and Bedrocan (CGC.V), have.

If you know of others that I should be paying attention to, let me know in the comments. I’m not only going to cover sponsor companies, I want to hear about any company that is in that sweet spot where the engine is revving but the gearstick is still in neutral.

Let’s do donuts together.

The bar is open.

–Chris Parry

http://www.twitter.com/chrisparry

PS: To those who didn’t think we’d get to the line: