Sam, I think the recent weakness in SNDK reflects overall stock market conditions and expectations than any particulars about the company itself. If institutional ownership is high (and I'm not all that sure, because of the curious way that street name accounts are handled), there may have been considerable profit taking at the end of 2003 so that fund managers could demonstrate higher performance. There may have been additional profit taking in the last couple of weeks, again to lock in a profit at a time when more and more investors suspect that higher interest rates could be hard on the market for the rest of the year.
The price drop, as I see it, comes from these expectations, not from the high probability of continually improving earnings for SNDK. If it is true that institutional holdings (i.e., holdings of mutual funds, pension funds, trusts, etc.) are down, then this is a time when individual investors can make the kind of decisions that will result in their outperforming the institutions by a considerable margin.
Art |
