Good morning !
You know I'm down 3.09% at the December edition of the 3 SOF Fast Portfolio. Today I'll place a risky bet, I'll buy 33.33% of the Fast Portfolio (as always) in a stock that rose 195% yesterday.
Here's my motives:
1) There were big news for the company: "Spherix's Naturlose Phase III trial gets FDA green light (SPEX) By Carolyn Pritchard
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Spherix Inc. (SPEX) said Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration has cleared the way for the company to conduct a Phase III clinical trial of Naturlose to treat Type 2 diabetes. A successful Phase III trial would allow the Beltsville, Md.-based company to file a New Drug Application for Naturlose with the regulatory agency, the final step before marketing."
2) There was no buy the rumor, the stock was at a low point:
(http://www.3stocksonfire.org/trading/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=11072;image)
Well, just a little bit, notice the volume increased just a bit before the spike up. But most people bought yesterday.
3) Despite the enormous 1 day advance, market cap is just $45.36M (I've checked with the SEC files, and on a dilution basis), which is too low for a Phase III trial approval for a diabetes treatment.
4) The stock will open lower, I'll buy at the open (approximately $5,000) and I'll sell it, let me see, if I get a 30% instant profit I'll take it, if not I'll continue holding it for tomorrow.
Wish me luck :)
This scenario is new to me.
What is type of history have you seen with a stock that doubles overnight?
How much retracement on the previous day's gain is average?
Down 10% now -
Great pick Randolph, got in at $3.21. The selling point for me was the market cap. You're right, the company is actually financially sound and entering Phase III trials, the market cap should be at least $100-150MM. Applaud
Out @ $5.30 for a 65% return in 3 hours. Thanks David
What a pick David,
It was moving faster than my EKG.Excellent
Hey! Great pick.. in at 3.34, out at 4.41..32% gain in less than an hour..hard to beat!
Thx. David, its really a good pick. in at 3.47 and out at 4.3. ;D
Quote from: David Randolph on December 07, 2005, 08:45:37 AM
Good morning !
4) The stock will open lower, I'll buy at the open (approximately $5,000) and I'll sell it, let me see, if I get a 30% instant profit I'll take it, if not I'll continue holding it for tomorrow.
Wish me luck :)
execellent job appluad
cheers
OLIVER
:o Great quick in and out on this stock bought 3.40 out at 4.42 - nice 30% in about 30 minutes...
Thanks for the tip on this, would love to hear more about the strategy on this one, David.
Cheers!
Quote from: rodri59 on December 07, 2005, 10:48:54 AM
Thanks for the tip on this, would love to hear more about the strategy on this one, David.
Hi rodri59,
(congrats on your fast profit ;))
David doesn't make intraday updates, thats why he always give the strategy in advance:
Quote from: David Randolph on December 07, 2005, 08:45:37 AM
4) The stock will open lower, I'll buy at the open (approximately $5,000) and I'll sell it, let me see, if I get a 30% instant profit I'll take it, if not I'll continue holding it for tomorrow.
Wish me luck :)
As you can see on the 3SOF
Fast Portfolio (http://www.3stocksonfire.org/3SOF_fast.php), we bought @ $3.76, which was the opening price today, and we'll try to sell it around $4.88
today acording to the plan, otherwise we hold it for tomorrow (if that's the case, you'll be able to see the next update before tomorrow's session).
best regards !
Once again, nice pick! Diabetes is global health issue and this is big.
Wow in the 6 hours i was asleep, this baby was bought and sold. I cant touch this one now. GJ to those that did. Must be nice
Did you sweat when the stock was down 15% after the open? Well, I did, that's why I love this game :-*
Sold a few moments ago at $4.90 for a nice 30% profit, that took the 3 SOF Fast Portfolio into the green ;D
Now I'm just going to answer a few e-mails and then I'll head home to watch Benfica-Manchester United for the Champions League (though my team is Sporting Lisbon).
It was a good day today ... but no motive to be ;D, because if I were to lose 30% in one day I wouldn't want to be :'(. Just business as usual.
Have a nice day :)
U the man David!!! Yet another nerve-racking victorious trade. Enjoy your Futbol game. I myself wll be watching the Mexican play-offs later on today.
Great & great pick.
Chcked the history, each time such news announced, the stock will go up several days and may reach to $13.00!!
I am all in this mornig and may hold for few days.
wow!! :o
It really sucked for me to miss this one!
Would have been nice! I guess this would be a nice way for me to learn to check the updates BEFORE the market opens by at least an hour; not an hour later.
Nice pick Dave :) Keep them coming ;D
This IS the benefit of being a "premium member" of 3SOF!
My money well spent!
Once again, keep up the GREAT work!!! :D
I placed some background info on SPEX and Naturlose (tagatose) vs Nutrasweet (Aspartame) and Splenda (Sucralose) at swing trading MB:
http://www.3stocksonfire.org/trading/index.php?topic=3635.msg36837#msg36837
I missed it ??? .. but Excellent job, David :o
Looks like I am the only one who chickened out and lost some money, lol.
I decided to work harder and made a few intraday trades on NVAX and AVII and that partially made up for the loss, but would have been great to join you all for the 30%. I am still green, gotta get my nerves stronger I guess.
Quote from: minkielover on December 07, 2005, 07:02:14 PM
I missed it ??? .. but Excellent job, David :o
So do i :-\ :'( :-\ :'( :-\ :'( :-\
Wasn't that a nice one! ;) ;D Beautiful.....$
All my goings on located here....
http://www.3stocksonfire.org/trading/index.php?topic=3911.0
Excellent pick David!(applaud) Congratz to all who made some nice 30%+ profits today ;D
-fousc
Wow David, this is a pick that gets the adrenaline going :o :o :o! Applaud, even though it was daring... Like you said could have gone the other way too! :-[
But would like to know, am I the only one that got in and got out AND got back in???? Want to give it another shot today. Going for another 10% ::).
Amarens
Quote from: Amarens on December 08, 2005, 06:11:17 AM
Wow David, this is a pick that gets the adrenaline going :o :o :o! Applaud, even though it was daring... Like you said could have gone the other way too! :-[
But would like to know, am I the only one that got in and got out AND got back in???? Want to give it another shot today. Going for another 10% ::).
Amarens
Be carefull. Volume was too high yesterday for the advance the stock produced. It should have gone up 300% for that kind of volume, to keep momentum rising. Good luck, though.
Another 10% in 20 minutes ::).
Now the question is one more time...????
And, David thanks for the warning. Will be carefull.
Amarens
Hey David,
It will be great if you could come up with one stock like that every week,LOL.No pressure.
Here is another one gone wild today.....ANLT
http://www.3stocksonfire.org/trading/index.php?topic=3939.0
Just saw an excellent short candidate based on David's success with SPEX - check this news:
Spherix's Toothy Smile
By Matthew Goldstein
Senior Writer
12/9/2005 4:13 PM EST
Click here for more stories by Matthew Goldstein
Updated from 11:09 a.m. EST
Spherix (SPEX:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take), the sugar-substitute maker whose stock has more than tripled this week on prolific volume, has a few cavities.
For one thing, the Maryland company bills itself as a science concern, but just about all of its $22 million in annual revenue comes from a tourist-reservation business it manages for state and national parks. It's a niche business that Spherix has managed to achieve some success in.
Selling tickets to see Old Faithful is not what got investors excited about Spherix, however. It's the company's long-held dream of finding a way to cash in on a low-calorie sugar alternative called Tagatose that's got investors frothing.
So far, Spherix has found few takers for its sugar substitute, which it has been trying to market for the past nine years under the brand name Naturlose.
Arla Foods, a Dutch company with the exclusive license to manufacture and sell Naturlose, has not generated any meaningful royalties from sales to food and beverage companies. Spherix also has made little from its attempt to market the milk byproduct as a sweetener for use in toothpaste, mouthwash and over-the-counter drugs.
There seems to be little demand for Naturlose as a food additive given the growing popularity of Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) low-calorie sugar product Splenda.
But hope springs eternal at Spherix, which believes it's on the way to getting Naturlose approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a drug to treat Type 2 diabetes.
On Dec. 6, Spherix issued a press release saying the FDA had "cleared the way" for the company to begin the final phase of clinical tests on Naturlose before seeking approval from the agency to sell it as a diabetes treatment. The company said the FDA gave the green light to begin the clinical trials following a meeting last month with several of Spherix's scientists.
The FDA, as a policy, doesn't comment on clinical trials before a drug is approved for market.
Nevertheless, the press release gave a sugar rush to Spherix's shares, sparking some frenzied trading in the normally sleepy stock with just 12 million shares outstanding. A day after the FDA announcement, more than 13 million shares of Spherix changed hands. On a good day, 50,000 shares of Spherix might be traded.
More significantly, Spherix share price took off like a rocket, rising from $1.27 a share on Monday to close at just under $5 a share on Wednesday. It fell back to $4.49 Thursday and slid again Friday, losing $1.04, or 23%, to $3.42.
Investors who binged on Spherix shares may have set themselves up for a sugar crash.
The company has lost money in each of the past three years and remains a long way from getting FDA approval for use of Naturlose as a drug. Indeed, the initial clinical trials using Naturlose as a diabetes treatment were "small" studies conducted by the University of Maryland about five years ago, Spherix said.
The early clinical trials, according to a company Web site, found that tagatose did not lead to any changes in subjects' glucose and insulin levels, and also helped with weight loss. The study concluded that tagatose, the product's scientific name, could be useful as a treatment of diabetes in conjunction with other drugs.
Of course, there's no guarantee the clinical trial will succeed when it's expanded to a much larger sampling of the population. Even Spherix acknowledges the company is a long way from getting FDA approval.
"The big hurdle is phase III," says Gilbert Levin, Spherix's chairman and chief science officer, who founded the company 38 years ago. "But getting there is no easy matter."
On Friday, a day after Levin talked to TheStreet.com, Spherix disclosed that the company's patriarch sold 62,900 shares on Dec. 7 and Dec. 8, after the announcement about the FDA meeting. The shares were sold at prices ranging from $4.60 to $4.75 a share, generating proceeds of about $289,000. After the stock sales, Levin reported owning 1.16 million shares.
So far, Levin, who owns 10% of the company's shares, is the only Spherix insider to cash in on the surge in the company' stock. Corporate insiders own about 21% of the company's shares. The other big inside shareholder is Levin's wife, Karen, who also has 10% equity interest. His wife is a director and vice president.
Levin, 80, is a big believer in Naturlose and its potential medical miracle. In 1995, when he was the company's chief executive and president, Spherix patented Tagatose as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes.
If nothing else, Levin, who turned over day-to-day control of the company earlier this year to his nephew Richard, is persistent.
To this day, he insists that an experiment he designed for use on the Viking space probe mission to Mars found signs of life on the red planet. NASA officials reject that claim, saying there was a problem with the results sent back by the unmanned spacecraft in 1976.
Levin, however, remains unmoved and believes his Mars experiment eventually will be vindicated. He says the same will happen one day with Naturlose.
"No major discovery was ever received favorably by peer review when it was made and that goes for Galileo and everyone forward," says Levin. "I'm sure it's going to be a very widely used product."
Earlier this year, Spherix suffered a setback in a clinical trial studying another potential medical use of Naturlose. Trials at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry didn't find any benefit from Naturlose in fighting the formation of plaque on teeth. The university's findings were "contrary to earlier laboratory findings by Spherix," according to the company's filings.
Investors also should bear in mind that Spherix, unlike most biotech companies that spend heavily on research and development, is a bit of a tightwad. The company reports spending just over $1 million on R&D over the past three years.
While Spherix waits for the results of the planned clinical trials, it may find itself hard-up for cash.
The company says it's facing the imminent loss of its contract to provide tourist reservation services for the National Park Service. Earlier this year, the Park Service awarded the contract, which accounts for 17% of the company's revenue, to a competitor. Spherix is protesting the decision, but says it cannot predict the outcome.
In an attempt to raise some badly needed funds, Spherix this summer turned to Cornell Capital Partners, a Jersey City, N.J., hedge fund. Over the next two years, Cornell is investing up to $4 million into the company through a financing vehicle known as a PIPE -- shorthand for private investment in public equity.
Last week, TheStreet.com reported that Cornell Capital is being investigated by securities regulators for its trading activity in shares of nine companies that it allegedly provided financing to. There's no indication that regulators are looking into the Spherix deal.
In many respects, the PIPE deal makes sense for Spherix because it provides it with a regular source of cash and because the company has few places to turn for financing. The deal is also good for Cornell because it gets to buy 2.38 million shares at a discount to their market value and can then quickly resell them.
But the flood of new stock is bad for current stockholders. In a filing discussing the deal, Spherix says its "common stock price may decrease due to the additional shares in the market."
So what we have is a Company that's main source of revenue is providing reservations for the parks dept. (and is losing that contract) that has invented a new Nutrasweet and has issued a misleading press release (Hello HYRF ) implying it's a possible Diabetes treatment, while the whacko former CEO unloads stock during the run up.
This thing will continue falling like a rock, IMO, back below $ 1.00
SPEX: Tagatose Sweetener Approved by European Union; Shares Spike 40%
Thursday , December 15, 2005 11:26 ET
Spherix Inc. (SPEX) said its Tagatose sweetener has been approved for use in Europe. Shares of Spherix were up 40%, to $4.45 in recent trading. Trading volume was more than 3.3M shares.
The SPEX bomb is ready to explode again.....This time the explosion will be much bigger that the previous ones.
The brutal market today gives folks an excellent opportunity to load on this explosive gem at truly bargain prices,
FACT: SPEX IS THE ONLY PROFITABLE BIOTEC WITH LESS THAN $30M MARKET CAP ENTERING PHASE 3 CLINICAL TRIALS FOR A POTENTIALLY BLOCKBUSTER DRUG
PHASE 3 clinical trials for SPEX's Diabetes Type 2 drug candidate Naturlose will start in March/April 2007according to the company. I expect an announcement shortly. Maybe that is a reason why a buyer purchased daily blocks ranging from 25K to 40K shares for almost 2 weeks now??
SPEX's Naturlose is is also currently being tested at University of Maryland as an anti-gingivities and anti-plaque agent to be used in toothpaste, mouthwash, and sugarless chewing gum. I expect an update on these tests shortly.
Unlike other biotecs, SPEX funds its BioSpherix Division's clinical development through strong earnings coming from its InfosPherix, information services division. InfoSpherix's backlog has increased from $11M to $75M within the last 12 months.
SPEX has been profitable or break-even the last 2 quarters due to InfoSpherix's strong increase in backlog and new contracts despite a huge jump in R&D expenses to fund its clinical trials.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=SPEX
SPEX INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS:
- Market cap: $28M
- Cash: $10M
- No long term debt
- Float: 9M
- PROFITABLE
On December 2005 SPEX gained over $4 or over 200% when it announced that the FDA had approved Phase 1 and 2 clinical data paving the way for SPEX to pursue Phase 3 clinical trials. In summary:
-- Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials show that Naturlose has an excellent safety profile
- Naturlose taken before food consumption prevents an increase in glucose levels in the blood
- Patients taking Naturlose lost weight and experienced a significant increase in HDL or good cholesterol
Naturlose, or tagatose, was discovered by SPEX's CEO Dr. Levin.
Tagatose is the newest member of the sweeteners category (going after Equal and Splenda). Tagatose has been granted GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status by the FDA allowing it to be included in foods as a sweetener. Extensive human testing has been conducted on tagatose to ensure its safety and human tolerance.
Tagatose does not promote dental caries and the FDA allows the approved dental health claim stating, "Tagatose does not promote tooth decay" or "Tagatose may reduce the risk of tooth decay."
On November 14, 2006, SPEX announced that based on tests, Naturlose was found to prevent gingivites and tooth decay. The announcement said that the company had contracted with the University of Maryland to conduct a 6-month trial on 80 subjects to determine its effectiveness as an onti-gingivitis and anti-plaque agent.
On December 15, 2006, SPEX announced that tagatose was formally approved "as a novel food ingredient" by the Europen Union (EU) permitting the use of the sweetener in a wide range of of products from soft drinks, to candy, to tooth paste. The approval followed approval by South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and other countries.
ABOUT SPEX:
Spherix Incorporated (Nasdaq: SPEX) engages in the provision of information services, as well as in the biotechnological research and development activities in the United States. It operates through two divisions, InfoSpherix and BioSpherix.
InfoSpherix division designs and operates contact centers providing information management and materials for reservations and other services for dozens of well known campgrounds through its ReserveWorld business line.
On February 24, 2007, InfoSpherix announced that it has added an integrated golfcourse management module to the suite of business solutions it offers to public parks agencies through its ReserveWorld business line.
BioSpherix division engages in the development of proprietary products for commercial applications. It offers tagatose, a sweetener, under the brand name Naturlose.....