Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch Ouch (CCEL)
I'm glad to see the sun begin to set -- this was the worst day my portfolio has seen for a very long time.
I'm a little bitter about the fact that I doubled down on my Exelixis (EXEL) position this afternoon, only to watch it inexplicably fall a few more percentage points -- but given my history I suppose I should expect just such a move, my short term timing stinks.
But the decline was nearly across the board -- Nasdaq fell about 1% today, but my portfolio dropped nearly 2.5% ... not enough to reduce me to wearing a barrel, but hard to watch.
And it was a remarkably broad decline -- as it would have to be to hit my very diversified portfolio this hard. Akamai (AKAM) had a nice recovery day, thanks perhaps to Jim Cramer's incessant promotion of the stock, but nearly everything else was down.
Some of the worst? Cryo-Cell (CCEL), whose earnings were, I thought "not bad" ... the Street disagreed, vehemently, and pushed it down about 15%. I don't want to sink any more into this one, but if their more aggressive marketing does it's job this year they should be able to grow significantly.
I'll have to look into the company in more detail -- Casino Capitalism, another blogger that has held CCEL, has certainly lost faith in management and posted today that he's looking to exit his position. I don't necessarily share his concern about management's plan to upthe online advertising budget, since that's where the customers are doing their research, but he believes they're late to the party and are in danger of overbidding (perhaps being a GOOG shareholder will cushion me there).
With CCEL, it's really a question of whether you think it's advisable to market aggressively into what I think will remain a fast-growing and competitive market, or you think they should take advantage of their steady revenue stream and manage their cash flow more conservatively, for more predictable returns. I'll let you know if my thinking changes, but I think they might be doing the right thing -- though it's hard to have conviction on that given the clear evidence that the market disagrees with me.
But the ugliness wasn't confined to micro-caps today -- Vertex (VRTX), Radyne (RADN), Taser (TASR), Myriad Genetics (MYGN), Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) and Click Commerce (CKCM) were all down by well over 3%. I know, 3% isn't much for these volatile tech and biotech stocks, but they don't often all move at the same time.
A lot of the pain in my portfolio over the last week or so has been in biotech -- I wrote last week that it looked like we might be seeing a nice biotech opportunity, but that guess was definitely early. Largely in the absence of news, most of my biotech holdings have fallen precipitously over the past few trading days. I wonder how much of this is attributable to fear over the next week or so, when we're going to see the sector bellwethers Amgen (AMGN) and Genentech (DNA) report their earnings? If that impact is significant, it should be short-lived and perhaps I'll have the courage to put a bit more cash to work if this decline continues -- though after EXEL bit my hand this afternoon, I'm not so eager.
I'm a little bitter about the fact that I doubled down on my Exelixis (EXEL) position this afternoon, only to watch it inexplicably fall a few more percentage points -- but given my history I suppose I should expect just such a move, my short term timing stinks.
And it was a remarkably broad decline -- as it would have to be to hit my very diversified portfolio this hard. Akamai (AKAM) had a nice recovery day, thanks perhaps to Jim Cramer's incessant promotion of the stock, but nearly everything else was down.
Some of the worst? Cryo-Cell (CCEL), whose earnings were, I thought "not bad" ... the Street disagreed, vehemently, and pushed it down about 15%. I don't want to sink any more into this one, but if their more aggressive marketing does it's job this year they should be able to grow significantly.
I'll have to look into the company in more detail -- Casino Capitalism, another blogger that has held CCEL, has certainly lost faith in management and posted today that he's looking to exit his position. I don't necessarily share his concern about management's plan to upthe online advertising budget, since that's where the customers are doing their research, but he believes they're late to the party and are in danger of overbidding (perhaps being a GOOG shareholder will cushion me there).
With CCEL, it's really a question of whether you think it's advisable to market aggressively into what I think will remain a fast-growing and competitive market, or you think they should take advantage of their steady revenue stream and manage their cash flow more conservatively, for more predictable returns. I'll let you know if my thinking changes, but I think they might be doing the right thing -- though it's hard to have conviction on that given the clear evidence that the market disagrees with me.
But the ugliness wasn't confined to micro-caps today -- Vertex (VRTX), Radyne (RADN), Taser (TASR), Myriad Genetics (MYGN), Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) and Click Commerce (CKCM) were all down by well over 3%. I know, 3% isn't much for these volatile tech and biotech stocks, but they don't often all move at the same time.
A lot of the pain in my portfolio over the last week or so has been in biotech -- I wrote last week that it looked like we might be seeing a nice biotech opportunity, but that guess was definitely early. Largely in the absence of news, most of my biotech holdings have fallen precipitously over the past few trading days. I wonder how much of this is attributable to fear over the next week or so, when we're going to see the sector bellwethers Amgen (AMGN) and Genentech (DNA) report their earnings? If that impact is significant, it should be short-lived and perhaps I'll have the courage to put a bit more cash to work if this decline continues -- though after EXEL bit my hand this afternoon, I'm not so eager.
Labels: CCEL
This article posted by One Guy @ 4/11/2006 04:26:00 PM 0 comments
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