To: John Zwiener who wrote (330 ) 4/28/1998 2:34:00 AM From: James Perry Respond to
I don't profess to be a professional tape watcher, but if you watch the tape and volume in this stock, it really seems pretty obvious why the price declined. A week or two ago, there was a very active buyer in the stock. Every day there was buying pressure, and in an attempt to suck stock out of weak hands the buyer or buyers tried to avoid showing a consistent pattern: buy in the early a.m. or late in the day or just buy around noon, etc. Then it became obvious that the buyer achieved whatever position he was trying to fill. And without steady buying pressure, it started to give back some of the price. From that bit of weakness - and it was not great; it would keep crawling back everytime it dropped a bit - a short got into the stock and the most recent listing of short positions in Nasdaq stocks showed 750,000 shares of Igen has been sold short. Now add a weak market, and Igen has become a screaming buy. Now the tape was saying that there was a bit of weakness in the stock price and in the absence of some other major buyer, a buck could be made from a short sale. But I would really be a nervous Nelly, trying to maintain a short position in this stock. First, I don't really have a short mental outlook, but beyond that, being short here is a dangerous position. Not a single fact has changed about the company. It still has sold two huge units to drug companies. It still has a suit to settle. And you can bet they are sitting with a point of care device ready to roll out - in fact they have had to enjoin BMG from trying to sell a POC device. Now, I am of two minds as to a POC market. I am not sure it will be easy to convince physicians to do sophisticated tests in the office. Yes, I know they now do blood tests, pulmonary breathing tests, etc simply because they can use a little device and bill for them. And they will also do this, ultimately. But it may be harder to sell them on this. I am not sure. I do strongly believe that it may start slow but it can be sold, and once the trend starts everyone will be getting on board. I have no doubt there are companies that would give their eye teeth to be able to market it. Like big bucks. Lots of future.
