>>To the contrary how about giving the analyst credit for
1. Making a good buy call on the stock ($38?).
2. Making a good sell call ($62?).<<
Agreed it was a good buy call; disagree it was a good sell call. Reminds me of the first time I heard of Cisco a few years back. Some fund manager in Barron's was talking about his double before selling out because the stock was in nosebleed territory. Well, that was a quite a few doubles ago. If you are trading GM, short-term tactics are great. If you take the trouble to understand the strategic situation of an untested company, enough to take the initial risk of making the investment, then you should stay the course until something fundamental changes. Once you sell for a short-term profit, you can always buy back in again, but in actual practice, who really does that? I gave some thought to selling some in the high 60s, but besides the tax issue, the stock was as likely to leap 15 points on a Prozac announcement as to fall 15. My point is this, if you are investing in biotechs, you need to be a strategic thinker and play for the long term, not happy you got a nice bounce out you go looking for the next play. This call was not a strategic call, but strictly short-term. Which makes me question whether the analyst really has a clue about the company.
As to whether or not the article was a hatchet job, that might be a bit strong, though I don't think there can be any doubt that it was negative on Sepracor. It was nominally balanced with comments from Sepracor bulls, but arranged in such a way that the weight was clearly on the bear side. I could give some examples but that would probably just be tedious. But you're right--I actually found the bull side well presented.
>>As for your conspiracy theories on the rationale behind the downgrade, I believe your imagination is getting the better of you.<<
Isn't that the fun of conspiracy theories? :o) I'm not terribly serious about them. Or, at least not about this one...
I've been holding SEPR long enough to have been through much worse declines, indeed. Doesn't make them any more fun. My guess is that this one will be short though.
good luck,
Bruce
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