Robert, Actually, I too was pleased with March. In February LGND moved from just below 11 to just below 15, even though it was the "off season" for Biotechs which are "expected" to decline after January (and they can be bought for a song in August - and it's looking like August, 2002 is when the real money will be made). The big event (NDA filing) for March didn't happen, but the price still rose and tacked on another point to it's impressive February gain.
As I noted earlier, reading posts from our nay sayers would suggest that LGND was actually headed for $10, as was posted just before the big move up. The record amount of news would also be ignored at best (usually complaints about lack of news were heard).
Of course one of our nay sayers may have been disappointed by the remarkably poor performance of the day trading strategy based upon LGND's "predictability". This formula of shorting at the open and covering at the close does wonders for the MMs, but really misses the boat for the trader, even if trading on a daily basis.
The formula was posted on Friday, after LGND gapped higher. The strategy of course misses out on such gaps and tries to take advantage of LGND's "predictable" downturn after such moves. On Friday, LGND's opening bid price was identical to the closing ask price, 15 3/4, resulting in no gain even though LGND traded as high as 16 1/8 and as low as 15 5/16.
On Monday the bid price again moved up before the open and even though the price did reach a low at the end of the day, the high happened after the open, so the gain for the day was a mere 1/16.
Today the bid again rose before the open, so the uptick allowed for shorting at the opening bid price of 15 5/8. However, LGND turned up in the afternoon closing at an ask price of 15 15/16 generating a loss of 5/16 for our mythical day trader.
It looks like the MMs gotta luv LGND, because they make money on each trade and collect interest when the stock is shorted each morning. At least our day trader will have something to offset the big gain from buying and holding DELL :-). |
