Thread:
Like Daniel (was it Daniel??) I have never, ever day-traded before. And...
I STILL HAVEN'T!!!
Yes, Aus, I saw 23, and figured, well, from $19 to $23 ain't a bad day's work. Especially since it only took an hour and a half.
But NO! With a 5 minute cushion, I could not get in to F&*!#$!!-ing Schwab, and so I could not sell. So, I am not a day-trader, I am, as I've always been, just a plain, old long.
Now, maybe as common sense sets it, I'll be pleased about this. Maybe when we move back up to $26 tomorrow, I'll be quite pleased.
In the mean time:
DON'T TELL ME that today's inexplicable swing(s) is (are) due to SNDK getting pigeon-holed with traditional storage media. $25-$17 in one day because of sympathy to a bad sector? I don't think so.
DON'T TELL ME that the "chip sector" as a whole is depressed right now. So, perhaps $37 was a little ambitious. $17 makes sense? Get real!
DON'T TELL ME that the market is efficient. Not today, pal.
I watched every trade of the afternoon (yes, I am that dull). I watched them all. Most were little guys, 100 shares here, 1,000 shares there. There were exceptions: at about 20 minutes before the close, 45,900 shares traded at 18 11/16ths, a seller who must be in pain right now. A few 10,000's went by, but very few.
So what happened? What made this quite reasonably positioned, profitable, growing company get hammered, re-hammered and twisted like a soft pretzel in a hurricane?
Leakage. Leakage, leakage, leakage.
Some idiot in the accounting offices of SanDisk called his cousin, who in turn called all of his pals, who in turn called God and his brother, and they started plinking off their 200 share mega-investments. In unison. A few others in the hallowed halls of SNDK did the same. Not insiders, mind you, but employees who can freely trade shares without benefit of clergy. And so, a stock that was reasonably valued in the high 20's has to deal with the indignation of high teens, and countless uninvolved parties panic alongside the slaughter, and get killed.
This valuation will not stand.
Volume doesn't back it.
Known financials don't back it.
Unknown (and I use the term loosely) 1st Q financials cannot possibly back it.
All news has been good news for SanDisk since January. Yes, Margaret, people don't buy as many digital cameras in the first quarter as they do in the 4th, but please. You knew that without being told. You built it into the stock price, you built it in at $37, and now you cannot use that as a reason to be flirting with $20.
Lexar? Come on. That's two years from being settled.
MP3? Factor it, buddy. It's huge.
Sony? Don't even start.
Write this down: SNDK at $50 before Y2K. And that's conservative, I believe.
And I will and am putting my money where my mouth is, despite my ill-fated foray into day-trading. It won't kill me to hold $19 stock to sell at $50 for Christmas.
This type of no-news, no-fundamentals, no-reason fluxuation has got to end, or people like me are just going to have to keep buying shares from people who are frightened by ghosts and rumours and bullcrap.
Today sucked. Tomorrow won't.
- Don |
