I decided though that I would take $1,000 and invest it in a speculative manner, on something risky but with potential. Someone on my friends list at the time made me aware of the Netflix competitor GamesNFlix (ticker: GZFX). Interestingly, the company was based in Franklin, Kentucky. I took a look at their SEC filings and it looked like they ran a fairly tight ship. The odds of any company wrangling Netflix's domination of the online rental sector are slim, but I figured what the hell. The stock price was $.007 at the time, so I was able to grab 120,000 shares for $800. In the past year, the stock has tanked rather spectacularly. It's currently worth $.0004/share. In other words, my $800 investment is currently worth $48. While the company has managed to consistently increase subscribers and revenue, they've yet to make a profit.
A company called SuperVision Entertainment (ticker: SVET) began sending letters to the Board of Directors of GamezNFlix in April and May of this year with interest in purchasing the company. SuperVision wants to acquire GZFX as a wholly-owned subsidiary for the purpose of using it to launch a World Professional Gaming League with an international television show to promote it. The prospectus for their idea is promising; if they achieve their membership goals it has the potential of generating $150-200 million in annual revenue for GZFX.
The Board rejected the buy-out, and further, made no mention of the interest to their stockholders. SuperVision is therefore planning a hostile takeover, seeking to acquire enough voting proxy of GZFX shareholders to oust current management. On 5/24/2007, GZFX quietly filed an SEC report stating that Board of Directors president David Gallant had resigned and 5 days later, SuperVision publicly announced their hostile take-over intentions via news release.
What does this all mean? It might mean nothing. What I do know is that SVET is currently worth $0.45/share and has been as high as $2 in the past 52 weeks. If GZFX strengthened to at least that, my stocks would be worth $54,000. Going into full dream mode, if the professional gaming league was wildly successful and stock prices sky-rocketed to say, $10 per share, I'd be a millionaire.
I'm certainly no stock expert and this is all unproven, risky, and speculative stuff. But there seems to be a lot going on behind the scenes here that could pan out. If you have some assets/income you can speculate with, you can pick-up 100,000 shares of GZFX for $40 at it's current market value. I opened my eTrade account with the $1,000 I originally planned to invest. There's still $160 in cash sitting there. After the trading fee, I was able to place a purchase order for another 365,000 shares tonight. It wasn't money I was using for anything else anyway, it was just sitting there doing nothing.