XMRV stock picks . . .

[xrayspex]

truth be told I decided to shift a little bit of money in my roth ira at vanguard into cerus, unfortunately one couldnt buy yesterday but I put in an order over the weekend knowing full well that it would likely go up today, its a total gamble and an amount I dont mind losing if that happens, its a small chunk of change i have in the roth for the next at least 10 years. I am just kicking myself I didnt follow through with buying it last week as I had planned. I have a small lame brokerage account at scottrade where I could buy individual stocks and I was trying to do it through them and was setting things up to transfer a little money to that account to do it and hit some computer glitches, also when I tried to buy the stock online at scott last week it wouldnt work, I suspect they can't handle macs or something, I had called them about it and they blamed it on my computer probly blocking popups but my computer works fine at vanguard and other websites, I just notice occasionally that my mac, opposed to my old pc, isnt accepted very well at a couple local news sites. and now apparently scottrade. I was going to stop by their office last week but got flared up from dental so didnt happen. but I can't believe a huge company like scottrade would have a system that hiccups when you are trying to buy a stock, wth.
Anyway, I am not very experienced with all of this, had started to research it about 10 years ago when got small chunk of change to invest for my future and at that time set up modest account at scott that has just sat the last 10 years....I learned a lot from that first experience as I put it almost all in tech in that small experiment as it was the end of the peak of that and all the national newspapers in US and Canada where I was at the time and the cnn shows said to buy nortel and the like.....that turned out real well, not. I wonder how everyone in Alberta is doing with their retirement accounts as seemed they had a lot in nortel.

anyhoo, long winded, I know you guys said cerus risky right now but its a small amount. most of my roth is in money market so didnt make or lose a lot the last 10 years. but what an awful 10 years to enter the game and start investing for retirement. I've been trying to diversify a bit in my roth (vanguard roth much more significant than scott, lost 75% of what was at scottrade cus of the tech picks I made 10years ago). Put a little in emerging markets and index etc but money market a joke want to venture out more but man the way athene explains how to do it seems very difficult and labor intensive. I was wishing the motley fool guys would have been right about their index fund idea 10 years ago for buy and hold for decent return. dont know about that s&p anymore though.

 

[George]

I hope you make lots' of bones. . . er, I mean money.

 

[xrayspex]

well if my life is messed up from all this I might as well try to turn doo doo into bones on my way out right

 

[George]

well if my life is messed up from all this I might as well try to turn doo doo into bones on my way out right

(big grins)

 

[Athene]

Xray, Some of the best investments are the ones you bumble into, rather than the smooth swoops. I am crossing my fingers for you!

I have been scim reading the Cerus 10k, which is on their website. They say one of their biggest business risks is the pressure that Obama is putting on medical services to reduce costs, and this could drive Cerus' prices/revenues down considerably. So I'd recommend you watch the news carefully for any info on cost cutting that Obama implements in that area, as it could be a trigger for a stock price fall. They also say three quarters of their revenues comes from just 4 clients, so if they lost one, they'd be ruined: that type of risk factor is usually a big turn-off for institutional investors.

I'd have a browse through their 10k when you feel up to it to pick out the other risk factors that you need to monitor from now on... (start on page 13, which talks about risk factors)

 

[mojoey]

Hey Athene,

As a counter to that concern, I think given the diversity of its potential market, if they get FDA approval they can use that to leverage their presence in the rest of the world where there is less regulation. But that still makes its value utterly dependent on growth and not anything it has actually achieved--hence pure speculation.

Overall the risks far outweigh the foreseeable benefits, with the "4 clients" being a primary concern. They did just recently acquire commercialization rights from BioOne in Asian territories, so I assume those clients were not part of the 4.

Cerus Corporation (NASDAQ: CERS) announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire BioOne Corporation's commercialization rights for the INTERCEPT Blood System for platelets and plasma, subject to approval of the transaction by BioOne’s shareholders. In 2004 and 2005, Cerus and its partner at the time, Baxter International, licensed the commercialization rights for INTERCEPT platelets and plasma to BioOne for an Asian territory, which included China, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. Cerus holds the commercialization rights for the INTERCEPT red blood cell system for this region. -

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100824006639/en/Cerus-Signs-Agreement-Acquire-INTERCEPT-Blood-System

It is 33% institutionally-owned, which is really low indeed for a biotech. One has to wonder if WPI is one of the 55 institutional holders! (I don't know the legal structure of non-profits when it comes to stock ownership)

 

[xrayspex]

Hey thanks so much you guys, really appreciate the brain power.

So Athene and Joey or others, has your experience truly been that in any market if you do your due diligence you feel like you can do alright over time? Because sometimes it all seems so scammish to me and then govmt interference and shorting.....just seems so willy nilly. When I read about what the guy who was shorting ampligen for big bucks did like 10 years ago, hounding sick cfs patients and feeding the WSJ false info to make the stock fall, well it just is disgusting, not a fair game at all or nec. based on having best product succeed.

 

[usedtobeperkytina]

Well, I just wanted to say, I looked at the Cerus stock page. It's value has gone up from $2.88 to $3.24 today.

I don't know if it is just overall market fluctuation or based on the XMRV news. I will say this, when I go to this page and see financial news reports because of its association with XMRV, that tells me that more people know about it than just researchers and a few doctors and us patients. We have gone mainstream. Today, there was "heavy call activity" on Cerus, whatever that means. (I know very little of stocks) One of the news reports (links on the right) says: "I believe XMRV will be the next great blood scandal. It may take the equivalent of a Rock Hudson press conference (for those of you too young to get the reference, Google “Rock Hudson, HIV, press conference”) to push XMRV to the front page, but it is going to get there."

This same article, a financial news article, has chronic fatigue syndrome in the second paragraph.

My oh my, how things have changed.

Tina
P.S. Cerus stock price is very low at $3.24.

 

[usedtobeperkytina]

I wonder

I wonder how many Wall Street guys are keeping up with the latest XMRV news.

I looked at GlaxoSmithKline stock value. In the last year, it started to decline in January (possibly when negative studies were coming out) and fell to its lowest in the past year on May 26 (was this close to when CDC study was held or reported to be negative?).

Now it is back up.

Of course, I know that just because there is an association does not mean there is cause and effect.

Tina

 

[Athene]

Hi Tina,
Heavy call activity means lots of people wanted to buy it, which is good news for Xrayspex.

Xray,
You are right that doing your due diligence helps, but there is always that element of luck, because unpredictable things will always crop up that.

Also, as a private investor you will never have the same chance as an institutional investor.
When I was an analyst in the industry I used to go to the company results meeting and find out their financial results in the morning. I put them in my computer and sent them to the sales team during the meeting so they were already phoning clients and buying or selling their stock before the meeting was ended. Then, after a leisurely lunch, the journalists were allowed to attend a replica of the same meeting. At the end of the day, they went home and wrote up a research article (or not) which went on the internet or a newspaper like the Wall Street Journal the next day. That was when Joe Public could start deciding whether to hold or selll or buy the same stock, i.e. When the big institutional investors had already made their (big) trades, and thus adjusted the market price to its new, appropriate level.

There are so many regulations trying to protect the public from unfairness but the most important step towards fairness in the equity markets would be to insist that companies have one meeting for everyone. That would also improve the journalist's standard of reporting. Their reports regurgitate exactly the "spin" that the company puts on things, whereas the professional analysys always asked very tough questions that unearthed things the company was trying to bury.... and I believe financial journalists would greatly benefit from sitting in on this.

 

[acer2000]

Up 15% today and still climbing:

http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:CERS

Should have pulled the trigger yesterday...

 

[xrayspex]

nice

when I put in my order this weekend for cers at vanguard, I expected to have to buy it at the price at end of day on tuesday, but instead they gave me the price from the beginning of the day which is cool since it was up by the end, perhaps the market counted MOnday as a trade day, it must have. Imagine that article and the conference are helping right now.