Pseudo-Lightning Round - Arena Pharma (ARNA) and Aussie Soles (AUSE)
We’re not even going to pretend to be Jim Cramer, though we don’t mind hosting something of a ‘Lightning Round’ of our own. We’ve gotten some questions about a handful of stocks the last few days, so we’re going to compile our responses and thoughts all in one place.
Of course, it’s not live, and it’s not impromptu…..which I guess takes the ‘lighting’ part of the description out. Anyway….
1) What are your thoughts in Aussie Soles (AUSE)?
You could do a lot worse, though that’s an unqualified opinion.
For those of you who don’t know, Aussie Soles is an Australian shoe maker. They specialize in making hyper-comfortable shoes…not unlike Crocs. Their claim to fame is the use of advanced ‘closed cell’ polymer foam. It’s light, sturdy, and ant-bacterial.
To answer the question from our reader, I like the chart, but I don’t know enough about the company to make a judgement call.
This bulletin board stock has traded well since it started trading on the board, though that was only in January. I have no history of the company’s success….maybe because the stocks is basically a new-comer. Do you have any information? My concern is the $85 million market cap. They would need to do about $40 million in sales each year to justify that. Maybe they can, but I just don’t see it happening. Let me know if there’s something I’m not seeing.
2) What do you think about Arena Pharmaceutical (ARNA)?
I liked it a lot better on Friday when it was rallying than I did on Monday when it was falling.
I’ll sum it up in seven words…..bad technicals, poor fundamentals, minimal future demand. Other than that, it’s great.
Their core focus is insomnia and weight loss drugs? Not that there’s not a need, but is this the best market they can come up with? OK, in all truthfulness, they’ve got other drugs in development; it’s just kind of hard to take them too seriously when they’re working so diligently on something that (frankly) isn’t all that hard-hitting.
If you’re one of those investors that likes profits - now or in the foreseeable future - you’re not going to be a fan of Arena.
As far as the chart is concerned, each rally effort is being met with even more selling. The 100 day moving average line appears to be the short-term hurdle, but even getting above it doesn’t seem inspiring.
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A couple of days ago I really thought we were hitting a short-term bottom, start a trade-worthy bounce higher, and then re-start the bigger downtrend. Looks like the market by-passed the ‘bounce’ part and dove straight into ‘more downside’. Stocks got trashed yesterday, and aren’t doing all that well today.This week, however, I think something’s become clear…it’s a little too easy for stocks to sell off, and any bullish days we do manage to make can’t muster any follow-through. That’s two steps backward and one-step forward, which is tough to trade in any direction.
Now, if the CEL-SCI news is only a little bit familiar to you, it may be because we’ve primarily focused on their cancer treatment Multikine. It’s also a vaccine, but obviously one with a much bigger impact on a market with much stronger demand. We haven’t been able to tell you much about Multikine’s progress lately because, well, there’s not much to report. The wrapped up Phase II testing last year, and will start Phase III testing later this year. Once this last round of trials gets underway, we’ll certainly have more to talk about.
