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DUMB TRADERS ANONYMOUS

This morning on the television I saw AMEX ticker symbol CSN climb 800%, from $0.08 to $1.09. Wow, I though, that is a stock to investigate. What the heck is going on there? The last time I saw that jump, it was 2002 and I was buying SONUS Networks.

CSN is the symbol for City Networks, Inc. This is a Taiwanese based company that provides wireless access infrastructure and resells network hardware. They don't manufacture anything,and claim this in their company profile:

"The Company also created the Hotspot solution and the Next Generation Loops (NGL) solution, both of which help companies extend their business to the carrier's solution to meet people's communication inquires." (From E*Trade)

Their website, shows the last news update in December of 2004. So this is a company that hasn't done anything in the last 2 years except exist.

(Update: The stock is now at $0.24 with a 118% gain. Someone is getting smart).

So why did its stock go up so high? The news wire (Marketwatch) listed the ticker symbol for Brazil's Companhia Siderurgia Nacional as CSN. This company was listed on a news brief about Pfizer's recent layoffs as being a possible purchaser of Corus Group (CGA). Imagine your excitement finding a big biotech stock for $0.08 per share. Bargain hunters abound!!

The run-up of this stock is a clear indicator that automated electronic trading is a dangerous game. About 1.6 million shares of CSN were traded today, which is enormously more than the average daily volume of 90K that this stock sees. That probably means a bunch of traders out there made serious bank on this mixup, and a bunch more of the not so savvy home traders are about to buy a stinker stock that will lose 90% of its value in the next 7 days.

All of this likely because Marketwatch listed the wrong ticker symbol for a real company. The AMEX will likely cancel all of these trades in lieu of the mixup, if they ever realize that it happened.

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