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October 23, 2010

China Rare Earth Metals Mining Stocks

The past week or so there has been a macro play on China tightening supply of rare elements. The mining sector in general has been extremely hot this year of course off the back of metals like silver and gold rising. This latest news which I imagine is further driving speculation of supply issues has boosted the share prices of a lot of mining stocks.

Rare earth minerals have a plethora of uses from fuel, to computers, and even lasers. This company called China Direct Industries CDII does magnesium mining and has rights on zinc mines. The balance sheet has $49 million in net tangible asset value against a current market cap of just $50 million.

full disclosure: no position in CDII

October 17, 2010

Cheap Stock Parlux Fragrances (PARL)

PARL has net current asset value of around $89 million and a market cap right now with the stock at $2.47 of about $50 million. A big bulk of NCAV is in inventory.

There was some significant volume in the stock on Friday and it is testing up against this long standing range it has been in since last year. The stock has been stuck between about $1.50 and $2.40s a share. Price action wise I think it is more likely to pull back the next couple days than start running higher. I may buy it a lower price. We'll see. I've just got it on a watchlist now.

full disclosure: no position

September 23, 2010

Silver Leaf Resorts Looks Cheap Again

Silverleaf Resorts (SVLF) has gone back down below net current asset value. It's brother in the industry Bluegreen (BXG) is down a lot too and below NCAV but I didn't like BXG's last quarterly.

SVLF has $127.8 million in net current asset value and is trading at a market cap of only $39.4 million at the moment with the stock at $1.04.

full disclosure: long SVLF @ 1.04

September 5, 2010

Health Care Bill Stocks Breakout Play

Near Net Current Asset Stock & health care stock Forward Industries FORD products include soft-sided carrying cases, bags, clips, hand straps, protective face plates, and other accessories for medical monitoring and diagnostic kits, cellular telephones, and bar code scanners. I read in the annual report that diabetic products were 75% of sales in 2009. With more people now being covered by the government all these people who are or are about to get type II diabetes should add to that segment.

I believe the market cap was just over NCAV. Net current asset value is $22.2 million and current market cap is around $22.5 million. The stock is volatile though and was up 19% Friday so it could actually dip below. They have a great balance sheet. The bulk of quick assets are in cash. I am sure there are a lot of other health care reform stocks out there as well that will benefit from the government subsidies if you will. This is just one that caught my eye because of the huge volume last week. MDF is an interesting chart too.




The stock is in a clear uptrend and seems to be possibly a failed double top on this wide ranging day spike. The only concerning thing is how much of an appetite is left after this run but being around NCAV seems positive in this regard. Hard for me to pick a spot technically to enter because the stocks momentum looks strong here. I might play it of continuation or a pull-back to new support at around 2.60. It's actually a better investment and hold type of play probably on health-care. Luckily one of the few long-term investments I still have is a healthcare mutual fund that I've held for some years. I sold my Stryker SYK about a couple years ago.

full disclosure: no position at time of writing

Healthcare Stock Vision Sciences VSCI

VSCI is a healthcare company that makes endoscopes for medical and industrial uses. VSCI has a market cap right now of $48 million. The balance sheet isn't as deep value as I usually look at but it is good.

Balance Sheet
Looking at the balance sheet we have current assets of 8,806 - inventory of 3,915 = $4.89 million.

$4.891 mil / $2.720 million in current liabilities = healthy quick ratio of 1.79

Also, there is $3.5 million in net tangible assets. The balance sheet looked good enough to me.

Income Statement
They had good sales growth year over year in 2009. Fiscal 2010 looks like negative sales growth. This first quarter of their fiscal 2011 revenue was down 21%. Urology and bronchoscopy sales were both up and ear nose and throat sales and repairs etc. (guessing that is industrial segment) were down.

More from the first quarter they just reported
  • ENT and TNE sales decreased 63% to $0.4 million from $1.2 million
  • Urology sales increased 28% to $0.9 million from $0.7 million
  • Bronchoscopy sales increased 113% to $0.4 million from $0.2 million and
  • Repairs, peripherals, and accessories sales decreased 33% to $0.3 million from $0.5 million,

It looks like they haven't been profitable on the bottom line annually for atleast a couple years. Looks like there was positive EPS of $.57 in 2007 annually(2008 fiscal?).

Some Thoughts
It looks like this healthcare companies biggest problems have been gross margins. Morningstar shows a 37% gross profit margin in 2004 and it's just been slowly declining since.

The old CEO resigned in November of 2009 and was replaced with an interim CEO who was on the board since 2005. I'm not sure if this has changed as of late right now though.

Ownership
The interim CEO Warren Bielke has bought 300,000 shares of stock just this year. Some $320,000 worth.

Morningstar says American Funds Smallcap World 529A has a 3.3% stake.

More Observations
The stock price went from $1.50 in late '07 to $6 in early '08.

The conference call for Q1 2011 was on August 12th. Interestingly the stock ran 28% after the conference call on the 12th through late August. I haven't read the transcript of that call yet. I didn't see it on Seeking Alpha. The audio looks to be here. The thing is though the call may not have actually been significant as far as the way the stock traded. It might just be correlation without causation. I would like to know if they have any guidance on revenue or earnings though.

One thing that stands out is the stock traded 590,000 shares on July 23rd and a whopping 1,109,200 shares July 26th! The stock has three month average trading volume of only 68,000. That was some unusually heavy volume. I believe that the last time the stock traded over 1 million shares intraday was in September of 2007.

















full disclosure: no position but I have it on my watchlist

August 21, 2010

Penny Stock CIT Triangle Trade

CIT which is now a penny stock got some news on Friday and subsequently the stock took off. CIT broke out of the days trading range and hit $.93 before people started taking profits which jolted the stock quickly down to the $.70s. CIT began to consolidate.

Here are some other triangles.

This is an ascending triangle.

A longer time frame triangle .

And another intraday trade triangles.




full disclosure: no position

How To Trade Triangles

There have been a lot of bio-tech and pharmaceutical stocks in play lately. It is time consuming and very hard to make a good long-term trade in these companies. Luckily, if you can just recognize chart patterns and use basic technical analysis it can take just a couple of minutes or even seconds to get a read on the next direction for the stock.

There's the triangle and key resistance levels. Three times the stock couldn't budge above 5.00. One time the resistance was even 4.99.


full disclosure:no positions

August 3, 2010

Former NCAV Stock Blonder Tongue

This former NCAV cheap stock Blonder Tongue Laboratories BDR popped 70% today off of earnings.

Operating EPS was positive vs a loss prior. Sales were up driven by digital video encoders. It looks like there is about 14.7 million in current assets and about 7 million in debt. So, this big pop pushed it over NCAV. But it still might be in play. I guess we will see.

disclosure: no position

May 4, 2010

My Movie On The Stock Market

This site xtranormal.com is pretty neat. It only took me about 15 minutes or so to make this conversation on the stock market movie.


May 1, 2010

Deep Value Golf Stock

Adams Golf ADGF this little golf club manufacturer that I've talked about a lot in the past has been bottoming out over the past several months and just recently reported their quarter. Revenue was slightly down but EPS was up huge from $.05 to $.21 year over year. They gained some market share in the US.

Net current asset value is $29 million. The market cap is currently right below at the moment at $27 million. So it is in net current asset value territory still at the moment. I bought some the other day at $4.15.
















Just recently broke out of a long trading range and had strong unusual volume.


full disclosure:long ADGF