Here's a few thoughts on MRY. I had some time so spent a few hours and went back through a lot of data.
I ran the month by month house positions for 8 of the largest houses that move in/out of MRY all the way back to January of 1998. By far the biggest net buying over this 18 month period has been through Sprott (up 2,224,000) and Nesbitt (up 2,181,000). Following these two is DS (up 1,018,000), Yorkton (up 563,000) and Levesque (up 562,000) There are several others that are quite nicely on the plus side as well, but these are the main ones.
So most of what I pay attention to is the buying of/through Nesbitt and Sprott. Nesbitt's buying is quite interesting recently. Here's why:
Going back several months, Nesbitt was doing some very large buying in November (+215k), December (+593k), January (+387k) and February (+222k).
After this period though, they've been pretty quiet...still on the buy mostly...but not as agressive. In April, they only bought net 14,000 shares the whole month. This past May, they actually sold 12,000 shares (which by the way was only the second time they ever net sold over the entire 18 months....the other time being October 98 for -65k shares)
What has caught my eye is the return to stronger buying in June (+90,000 shares) and after only 3 trading days so far in July, they're already up almost 60,000 shares. Is MRY oversold? They seem to think so!!
The other thing I find quite encouraging is the sheer volume that just a couple of these houses have been accumulating over the past 18 months. The float on MRY isn't that big (16.5mil) and right off the top I can see well over 1/3 of these shares that look to be in strong hands courtesy of Nesbitt, Sprott and DS.
So why the drift down? It bugs the heck out of me, but it's trending on low volume with mostly retail guys tripping over each other. Someone at McDermid in particular is pretty whiny and is selling, but from what I can see, it is a pretty minor position held through them.
A couple of times MRY has tried to break the trend, but hasn't yet, and so the trend has continued over the past couple of weeks. Nesbitt has definitely stepped up their buying at these levels which is good. They're definitely worth keeping an eye on for cues. If their buying continues (which it certainly looks like it will) and the others step in too...then MRY is off and running again.
Perhaps the Nesbitt buying is the signal that MRY is about to break the trend. Frustrating to watch at the moment...but with a return to bigger buying, an ever-tightening float, and the right news from the company (which I fully expect given the great track record of the company over the past year), MRY should bounce back very nicely.
All of the above is just based on the trading patterns I see and completely overlooks that I think MRY is a good company with a bright future!!
As they say, buy at the bottom! (By the way...bought some more today too!)
Best regards,
Kevin |
