a couple questions from a noob

Hi all,

(Total noob here)

In my recent scanning for different stocks with ThinkOrSwim's scanner, I came across DDE. A week ago it started an ascent from 1.3 to where it is now, about 1.71. I didn't see any news reports or PR or anything as to why this was going on. But digging in yahoo finance, I saw that a research report came out the day before it spiked. (I tried to link but apparently my post count is too low to do so.)

It is the only one that came out for this company that day, and none had come out for 5 days prior to that.

I have two questions:

1. Do people actually buy these reports?
2. How likely is it that the contents of this reports is what triggered this and not a coinciding 'pump and dump' or something else?