ACAD - Acadia Pharmaceuticals
The small-cap pharma stocks have been on a tear this week and one I've been watching for weeks now but which finally ran away from me without me taking a position -- a combination of a lack of funds a couple of weeks ago and then hesitation on my part when it looked like the broader market might turn south -- is ACAD [NASDAQ:ACAD]. Basically, I'm kicking myself right now but it may not be too late to get in because this is an unpredictable and highly mobile beast with massive upside potential!
The very brief skinny on ACAD is that they are set to announce topline Phase III results for their Parkinsons drug, Pimavanserin, "in Q3 2009". No prizes for guessing that a drug to treat Parkinsons would be huge as there is currently no FDA-approved treatment for PDP:
The start of the first Phase III pivotal trial in our pimavanserin PDP program is a key milestone for ACADIA and an important step forward toward our goal of providing a first-in-class treatment for patients with PDP," said Uli Hacksell, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of ACADIA Pharmaceuticals.
"There currently is no drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of PDP. We believe pimavanserin may provide a unique combination of antipsychotic efficacy, motoric tolerability and safety and, therefore, represents an important advance in therapy for patients suffering from this debilitating disorder."
The stock was languishing around 2.00 for a while now but volume increased this week and because it has a small float, when it moves, as it did today, it frickin' MOVES!
There was no news to drive it, though. Some thought it was speculation about the results being announced imminently but a Yahoo-boarder worked out that the results can't be ready until August at the earliest (based on the time for the trial, compilation of the results, etc) so there may be a little time for it to retrace.
What could have been the driver is that someone with VERY, VERY deep pockets made MASSIVE buys on the $5/$7.50 call spread for September today and the stock took off around lunchtime rocketing from the mid $2s to $3.75 before retracing back to below $3.20 (I had a buy order for $3.05 that never hit).
It closed in the $3.40s and raced to $4.22 in the AH! On no news whatsoever... And, not wanting to chase it, I just sat and watched!
Lesson learned that if you are confident in something to buy I presume? hehehe :wink_bys :smile_bys
Yep, don't wait for the market trying to get a lower entry point or assume a stock is going to sit around forever waiting for you!
SOMX was another case in point -- I missed that initial run-up this week as well but played a perfect day-trade today, riding from 2.80 to 3.60 :smile_bys
Look up your slimmed-down sample one-by-one on OTCMarkets.com. They have a financials tab and a filings tab (to confirm the formatted data). The SMF add-in works on the OTCM site with some finageling or you can copy/paste the financials tab into excel. However, this slimmed-down sample is probably going to be 50-150 companies so it's probably worth spreading them manually (using an OSV model might be helpful). You will have these spreads for the future (investing competitive advantage) and you will be more likely to spot interesting data points in the financials or red-flags.