After week after week of my portfolio moving up or down 2% or 3% per week, this week it was up a tiny four tenths of one percent. A calm boring week, you think, where nothing happened.
What an illusion! This was probably the most turbulent week of all. Huge rises and falls with little reason. Let’s take a look at some of my stocks!
The spectacular Downs:
BOFI – Down $19.10, or 18% due to a short attack. Granted, the price had gotten a little ahead of itself, but this is one of the best run banks there is, as far as I can tell.
CELG – Down $5 or 3.3% in spite of one of their most important drugs getting an FDA clearance on Friday. This could turn out to be a blockbuster drug. While the existing drugs to treat psoriatic arthritis have a somewhat higher efficacy rate, they are all injectables with lots of side-effects, while CELG’s drug is oral, a pill, with minimal side-effects. Which would you try first?
SCTY – Down $8.75 or 12%. This is just normal week-to-week volatility for SCTY.
SZYM – Down 64 cents or 4.6%. No reason.
WETF – Down $1.04 or 7.4%. Also enormously volatile.
APPY – Down from $3.19 to $2.80 or 12% (small position, giving back some recent gains)
Okay, you ask, with huge drops like this, how could you be up on the week? Well, here are some of the more spectacular Ups:
AFOP – Up $1.51 or 11.4%. (Now up 20-30% from when we were first discussing it). I don’t know why it got so low, or why it chose to go up so much now.
HZNP – Up $4.20(!) or 32%(!). It started rising with earnings but then really went up on an acquisition. All in one week.
INVN – Up roughly $2, or 9%.
PSIX – Up $4.25 to roughly $80, up 5.6% (They were actually up $8 by Thursday, but gave back some of the gains on Friday. This was a week, by the way, where the other natural gas engine maker, WPRT, dropped from $17.04 to $15.66 or 8% more on its steady decline. I suggested the alternative of PSIX on the WPRT board a year ago, when they were both at $29, and pointed out that there was no chance of WPRT being profitable any time soon, and I got viciously attacked for criticizing a MF pick. Crazy.)
UBNT – Up $2 or 3.8% (my biggest position, so it helps).
Z – Up $13.15 or 15% on rumors of them going into commercial real estate.
Yep, a calm quiet week with nothing happening. Boring!
Saul