"Baba the reality is that you do not "know that". You "suspect that" because of past experience which is worth absolutely nothing when you really think about it accept for providing fuzzy logic."

I try to be careful in choosing my words.  When I write "know that" I generally mean it, but sometimes words can get away.  Not in this case.  We have a Venture stock with a wheeler dealer CEO at the time (PC), with no earnings, and a hopeful tech being developed at MIT, no, CalTech, no Stanford or Berkeley, oh, that's right UCONN!  Not the hotbed for tech, but fine.

I could have had no past experience in speculative stocks and picked POET as one!

Past experience comes in very handy.  I been on plenty of boards over the years, with people every bit as sharp as you, Rainer and various others who, I suspect, understand the tech pretty darn well, for non-employees!  Those sharp people turned out wrong in most cases, so what I learned is just cuz you're really smart and pretty well versed in the tech of the company, does not mean that you're ultimately correct.  There is so much more than just the tech to consider, things many of us just can't believe would happen - foremost amongst them, for me, anyway, the lousy PO last fall. Those kinds of things have fairly long term effects.

Even with the PO, just cuz I couldn't believe it would be that bad, doesn't mean I don't suspect that management had no other better choice.  Although I suspect management got fooled somewhat by the brokers - I don't think management figured from the start that the UNIT price would be $.36, but the ball was rolling, momentum and all, and the highly suspected need for cash.

But whether I knew it was speculative or just suspected, is irrelevant.  What is relevant is how the company does going forward.  I remain optimistic that the share price will eventually move northward, but, as I've maintained since the PO last fall, it's gonna take some really good news.  The home run shot is still alive.