Vivus, Inc. (VVUS) – Buzz Stock of the Day

Posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Shares of weight loss drug maker, VIVUS, Inc. (Nasdaq: VVUS) surged as much as 13 percent from Monday’s closing price, in morning trading on Tuesday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released documents that showed FDA researchers believe that use of Vivus’ diet drug Qnexa can result in “significant” weight loss. However, the agency raised questions about the drug’s safety.

Vivus shares were up about 34% to $14.25 in Tuesday’s pre-market trading session.

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In the FDA’s review of Qnexa, posted online Tuesday as part of the briefing documents for Thursday’s advisory panel, pooled data from two large phase III studies demonstrated that patients treated with low, medium and high doses Qnexa lost between 3 percent, 7 percent and 9 percent of their body weight, respectively, adjusted for the weight-loss reported for patients treated with a placebo.

Qnexa’s safety and not the drug’s ability to help patients lose weight, was the major concern entering Thursday’s meeting. In its briefing document Tuesday, FDA’s safety review highlights five areas of “particular interest” related to Qnexa — pregnancy risk, psychiatric-related adverse events, cognitive-related adverse events, metabolic acidosis and cardiovascular events. Many of these concerns, however, were expected.

Vivus, in its own briefing documents, said research showing that 68 percent of adults in the U.S. are overweight indicate a clear medical need for Qnexa.

A panel of experts is scheduled to review the drug on Thursday, with the FDA making a regulatory decision in October.

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Sun Bancorp, Inc. (SNBC) – Buzz Stock of the Day

Posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Shares of Sun Bancorp, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNBC) surged 47 percent in morning trading on Thursday after the company announced that billionaire investor, Wilbur Ross will be acquiring a 25 percent stake in the New Jersey-based bank chain.

Ross, who has acquired stakes in banks in Florida and Michigan, said he expects thousands of U.S. banks to fail as a result of the financial crisis. Ross and the bank’s founding Brown family will buy $100 million of common and preferred stock at $4.00 a share, equal to a 24.9% stake, in Sun Bancorp, Inc., the parent of Sun National Bank. The transaction still has to be approved by shareholders.

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The Vineland-based Sun Bancorp, Inc. has $3.5 billion in assets and 70 branches in the state of New Jersey. Ross will join the boards of Sun Bancorp and Sun National, the bank said. Sun National Bank — Sun Bancorp’s main subsidiary — could be the first of many banks Ross acquires in New Jersey, he told the New York Times on Wednesday.

The cash injection would also raise Sun Bancorp’s Tier 1 risk-weighted capital — a common measure of capital strength — to 13 percent or above. The bank said that level was above the 9.5 percent required by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under an April agreement.

Check out this interview with Wilbur Ross, conducted in August of last year. Great insight into his views on the banking industry:

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Netlist, Inc. (NLST) – Buzz Stock of the Day

Posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Shares of memory subsystems maker, Netlist, Inc. (Nasdaq: NLST) were up as much as 27 percent from Tuesday’s closing price, in morning trading on Wednesday after the company announced that Dell, Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL) qualified Netlist’s 512 megabyte and 1 gigabyte flash memory-based, non-volatile cache subsystems. Shares traded as high as $2.93 on Wednesday, up from $2.30 at the closing bell on Tuesday.

“Partnering with Netlist gives Dell’s enterprise customers added flexibility and peace of mind when deploying PERC cache solutions,” said Sally Stevens, vice president, Server Product Group Platform Marketing, Dell, Inc. in a statement. “NetVault NV delivers the reliability and performance our customers require while reducing the total cost of ownership for this high performing disaster recovery solution.”

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Netlist’s NetVault NV would help Dell servers recover and retain data for weeks in the event of data-center power failures. Earlier, Dell had also selected Netlist’s battery-backed module, NetVault BB, to hold memory data.

“Dell’s qualification of NetVault NV for this high reliability, disaster recovery application demonstrates our ability to deliver differentiated products enabling OEMs to deliver best in class datacenter solutions,” said Steve McClure, Netlist’s vice president of marketing in a statement.

We previously featured Netlist as a Buzz Stock of the Day on June 14th. Shares were up about 30 percent that day, from the previous day’s close, after the company announced that its HyperCloud™ memory module was been selected to run on servers owned by British IT solutions provider, Viglen to support High Performance Computing (HPC) applications.

Click here to read what other traders are saying about Netlist, Inc. on the company’s official Buzz Stocks Board!

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Technical Trading – Stochastics

Posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

The technical indicator called Stochastics is used to determine patterns of uptrends and downtrends in a stock’s trading pattern. The oscillation of the Stochastics shows you when a stock is nearing or within an oversold area or nearing or within an overbought area.

Stochastics come in two main varieties, fast and slow. Both are graphed between 0-100, where over 80 means overbought and under 20 means oversold.

Stochastics Fast

The Stochastic Fast is charted using the following two lines.

Fast %K: [(Close – Low) / (High – Low)] x 100 (shown as black line above)
Fast %D: Simple moving average of Fast K (3-day MA) (shown as blue “trigger line” above)

Stochastics Slow

The Stochastic Slow is charted using the following two lines.

Slow %K: Equal to Fast %D (3-day MA of Fast %K) (shown as black line above)
Slow %D: Simple moving average of Slow %K (shown as blue “trigger line” above)

Which is better? Well, the Stochastics Slow is usually preferred by most traders because is does not show as many false buy and sell signals.

Stochastic Price Divergences

One other aspect of Stochastics that I would like to touch on are Stochastic Price Divergences. This occurs when the Stochastics begins to oscillate within a smaller and smaller range. If the narrowing range is encompassing high numbers around 70 and above then this is a very strong bullish signal. The opposite is also true, if the narrowing range is encompassing low numbers below 30 then this is a very bearish signal.

Below is an example of a bullish Stochastic Price Divergence.

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Broadwind Energy, Inc. (BWEN) – Buzz Stock of the Day

Posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Shares of wind power equipment manufacturer, Broadwind Energy, Inc. were up about 37 percent from Friday’s close, in morning trading on Tuesday, after the company announced its subsidiary, Tower Tech, Inc., was selected by Gamesa Technology Corp., a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica, to supply structural wind towers for wind sites in the U.S. The towers are expected to be installed in the fourth quarter. The value of the contract was not disclosed.

“Proven experience, flexibility and well-established competencies were key elements in our decision to select Broadwind’s Tower Tech subsidiary to construct our next-generation towers for these projects,” said Jim Buddelmeyer, vice president of purchasing at Gamesa.

The Gamesa deal doesn’t relate directly to sales of wind turbines by Broadwind Energy, Inc., but it was much-needed good news for the green energy stock, which has lost more than half of its value year-to-date.

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Last year was a record-breaking year for the wind power industry, with about 9.8 gigawatts installed. But the industry is in for a 40 to 60% drop this year, with analysts expecting anywhere from 6.3 GW to 7.1 GW to be installed. Key states including Texas, Minnesota and California have historically been wind hot spots. However, tepid utility demand, inexpensive natural gas and transmission congestion have led to a reduction in the number of power purchase agreements that have been signed. While the U.S. has expansive coastal wind resources, offshore is expected to account for only 5 percent of installations by 2025.

Although there have been unprecedented levels of federal support for wind energy, without a federal renewable portfolio standard [RPS] and streamlined transmission and siting processes, the time for projects to become operational will be greatly delayed. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance: “To compete in the era of low-priced natural gas, the levelised cost of wind generation must drop substantially on a MWh basis. This means the industry cannot sit on its laurels but must re-dedicate itself to technological innovation.”

Trading in Broadwind shares remains volatile, however, trading well below the $8.12 share price at which Broadwind Energy was trading at the onset of 2010. Broadwind shares have traded at $4.00 or below since March.

Broadwind Energy, Inc. was first covered as Buzz Stock of the Day in June 2009, after the company announced a realignment of its management team to advance its business development, international and technology efforts.

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Posted in Energy Stocks, Technology Stocks by admin | 2 Comments »


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