Sunday, June 22, 2014

Time to Bet Against the Majority With IsoRay (ISR)

Ugh. It's fun to be right about a stock, but it's exhausting to be too right, too fast. Case in Point? IsoRay, Inc. (NYSE: ISR). Yours truly posted some bullish comments on ISR just a couple of days ago, explaining how that day's move above a key ceiling meant a new bull trend was underway, and more gains from that price would be far easier to muster. Well, good news for those who heeded the advice - IsoRay shares are up 44% today.

That's not necessarily a good thing though... or not necessarily something we were prepared to contend with so soon anyway. Now that ISR is trading around $1.60, many investors are being forced to make a decision - sell it here and lock in a nice gain, or hold onto it and hope IsoRay, Inc. can find a floor around here (and not pull back) in anticipation of another round of bullishness soon.

My opinion? Take the money and run.

While the news that came out this morning - the news that drove the stock to where it is now - was deemed as a surprise, it shouldn't have been surprising to anybody who was watching the stock as of Monday. The apparent strength then was quite likely the response to knowledge (from someone, somewhere) that something big was going to be unveiled soon. See, there are never any actual surprises with stocks ... someone always knows something. It just didn't become official until today, and when it did, the rest of investors who didn't sense something was coming then piled in today. Problem: That bid-up most likely pushed IsoRay shares up to their best value they're going to see for a while.

How's that? The weekly chart of ISR below tells the tale. With today's high of $1.74, ISR has matched its third-best high since 2009. Worse, the stock peeled back immediately after hitting that peak, and at $1.54 is struggling to even hold at the lower end of the range of all its major peaks hit since 2009. And that point can't be made enough - the last eight times IsoRay managed to hurl itself above the $1.47 level, all eight times it's bee! n unable to stave off a significant pullback. It's unlikely this ninth time is going to be any different.

The moral of the story? While it's certainly going to be an unpopular premise, while everyone else is buying today, the smart-money move for any who took the advice two days ago is to use this buying spree as an opportunity to lock in profits while the 27% profit (since the 17th) can be locked in.

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