LOL, that link seriously made me laugh. Man am I glad I don't need to do stock research anymore. Though I have to admit that stumbling across the Vice Fund did make for an entertaining day sharing the info with portfolio managers I used to work with in light of the fashion of Socially Responsible Investing> at the time, which is incidentally not quite the rage it was several years ago. 

posted by Vanalyn at 08:44PM CST on July 24

One the one hand:
* this cartoon, and
* this ludicrous press release two days before they release lowered guidance, and of course
* this nocturnal emission of value.

On the other hand:

* The overnight selloff has brought it below its book value of 5.5. If they went and sold everything, from their back stock to their desks and pens, their shareholders would realize a gain over the stock price.
* None of the forward estimates are worth trusting, but if their newly revised guidance is reasonable those figures indicate a buy even at 9. (They usually like to only give bad news once, so estimates accompanying bad news are really conservative. On the other hand, if the ship be sinking any estimate is an overestimate)
* Insiders were selling, selling, selling all through 2007. However, since Dec 07 there have only been option exercises and one direct purchase of 250k. This probably just reflects board discipline, but still says something better about the stock's current value than their actions up to Oct 07 did.
* The short interest ratio of 8.3 indicates undervalue: all those people who sold short will be literally laughing all the way to the bank so they can cover their short positions. In doing so they will bid up the price, though.
* See the big spike in put interest last month? Someone made lots of money on that. Even still, the put to call ratio was at 70%, and near neutral in percentile, before last night's crash. This would indicate optimism among the smart money, except that some of the smart money was selling puts at 12 all last week.
So: that stock price of $70 was pure ass smoke. Why the fuck do you stay in when the owners are cashing out as fast as they can? $5 is too low, though.

On the other other hand, don't buy a ticket on a sinking ship unless you own your own yacht. 

posted by mrflip at 01:38AM CST on July 25

Birkenstocks eventually stabilized in popularity, and grabbed their own niche market, ya? I would think that this would be a somewhat analogous situation to that. 

posted by Valatan at 05:29PM CST on July 26

Why do you say there's been an exit from socially responsible funds, V? Eyeballing this rundown of SR funds and not accounting for survivorship bias: they underperform index funds (as all managed funds must), but there's nothing that looks to me like an exodus.

This is an honest question -- if there's something showing these have faded I'd like to read it. 

posted by mrflip at 09:17AM CST on July 27