11th
Quidel (QDEL) soars on flu diagnostics then gets cold: End of TR (Twitter Reality) Portfolio 09/11/09
- Sold QDEL at $16.99 (-8.7%) [Bought at open for $18.60]
Quidel pre-announced yesterday that it would post record Q3 profits on its flu diagnostic tests. QDEL soared after hours yesterday to 19 and opened today at $18.60, reaching of high of $18.81 before it began to decline to close at it low. This gave TR its worse loss in four months.
Although the TR portfolio has been relatively successful in its run since 1/12/09, the tide has definitely turned. In the first quarter of the year, the overall trend was that any good news about a stock (and the associated Twitter buzz) foreshadowed the stock charging out of the gate at the open. Since then, the overall trend has been to take profits when a stock surges at the open. It would appear that we are seeing two sides of a behavioral pattern. Earlier in the year, buyers were looking for opportunities to get in the market. Now, with a great many investors already in the market, they are looking for opportunities to sell and take profits when a stock takes off. Despite trying many different metrics and approaches to evaluate Twitter buzz vs. short term performance, TR cannot fight this tide.
So, TR in its present form is closing shop. In the coming weeks I will be getting back to doing more trading based on real-time information, along the lines of some of the earlier postings. I will be doing this in stealth mode, at least for a little while.
I would like to thank everyone who viewed TR and those who gave feedback, both positive and negative. Special thanks to Phil Pearlman for suggesting I set up this blog in the first place. It’s been fun!
Happy Trading,
Sandy (mandelbrot)
Final TR Portfolio scoreboard (started on 1/12/09):
Number of trades (closed): 118
Winners: 52%
Average P&L per trade: +.6%
