mst, no regrets needed. I make my share of mistakes, and that was one of them. It had a better than 50% chance of retesting the high, I placed my bets and lost, not really a big deal. The question is what next.
It is quite possible that the main reason for the decline was rooted in the perception that the securities industry might hit a rough spot in the near future. In the last two weeks, the volume on the NYSE has gone down drastically and on the average we have only 70% of the volume we have had in the last six months. Whatever the "virtual" spread sheet was for the VTS system, its top line assumptions must have been tied to overall market volume, and it is quite possible that cutting this top line by 30% delays the arrival to the "promised land" of positive cash flow. If we enter a period of few quarters where this lower volume becomes "permanent", or even if the notion that it might become "permanent" develops, the impact on ASTN will be much greater than that 30%, simply because there must be a "break even expected volume" under which cash still leaks out.
Thus there might be no nefarious causes for the decline, but simply ratcheting down of expected profitability (or expectation of no profitability, and thus more cash requirements) due to the current lull in the NYSE volume.
Zeev
Zeev |
