It’s been an interesting 15 years for GeoInvesting. Those who have grown with us probably know our history pretty intimately. They know that we began as a research firm offering free bullish biased research on quality microcaps and high probability turnarounds. They know that for a period of time our research included intense investigatory due diligence, rooting out fraud in the universe of China-Based companies listed on U.S. exchanges, as well as on U.S. Pump and Dump schemes.

As a matter of fact, we’ve even had a Netflix documentary released about us, The China Hustle, in which we were the main protagonists being profiled as among the first to spearhead the campaign to “out” scores of companies who bilked investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, we even got death threats…for being the messenger.

So, while we founded Geo based on a journey to find the best microcaps, a fork in the road led us on a path to become even better at what we do because deep on-the-ground due diligence requires a specific set of skills and unique kind of tenacity to try and convince the crowd that what we were doing was for the ultimate health of a properly functioning market.

We used a similar approach to exposing the Pump and Dumps, or those companies that promise unrealistic pie-in-the-sky, revolutionary and purportedly disruptive products and services designed to make you rich through their stock.

Investing in the equities representing these concepts most assuredly ended in a rug pull on unsuspecting investors once the stock prices got inflated by 100’s, if not 1000’s of percent, only to have enriched the bad actors at the core of the schemes.

In the end, over 13 China-based companies either got delisted or went to near $0 based on our findings, although our report count was at least double. Many of the companies avoided the wrath of the courts by going private or voluntary delisted at unreasonable prices, escaping justice by simply going back to China, where they would not be held accountable for their malfeasance. But not after they raised billions of dollars in our capital markets.

All in all, we always stayed close to our roots with microcaps, but started to approach ALL investing with a much more critical eye – you could say from that point on there was a tinge of portfolio protection laced within our research, no matter how bullish we were – caveats that accompanied our literature, and scrutinizing the ‘Risk Factors’ section of SEC filings became a mainstay of our research process.

So, we haven’t totally abandoned the opportunities for the deeper dives when the right circumstances present themselves. You could call it ‘Portfolio Protection Light’, borrowing from the asset-heavy due diligence business plan that engulfed us for several years. Heck, an old tri-fold of ours showcasing the nature of our on-the-ground due diligence and document analysis says it all, so you can just imagine how far we went.