Past AFFY stock holders

[kv968]

I know there were at least a few people on here who traded AFFY a couple (few?) years ago and made a nice profit on it.

I'm not sure if anyone follows it anymore but I just wanted to let you know that it fell ~85% today and closed at $2.42. There evidentally were some allergic reactions and deaths linked to one of their drugs:

Affymax

Just goes to show you, you never know when bad news will hit and why it helps to diversify.

Granted the entire market sold off some today but if you had a lot of your money in this stock it'd have been a whole lot worse.

[KTP]

I saw that today...makes me feel not so bad for selling my AFFY at $7 then watching it go to $22. I feel bad for people who bought in at those high prices though....

[Slug]

Wow big swings for that one and CHTP recently. Glad I've moved more and more to indexing.

[disneysteve]

I saw that today...makes me feel not so bad for selling my AFFY at $7 then watching it go to $22. I feel bad for people who bought in at those high prices though....

Same here. Would have been nice to ride it up over $20 but I made my money and got out. Beats watching it crash and burn.

[gambler2075]

I figured someone would notice what happened to AFFY :P

Traded it a bunch of times since the fall, mostly 10K (share) blocks, made about 10K$ on it. I do think there will be a 50% jump in the next 2-3 months or sooner, based on them announcing some sort of possible nugget of hope, however, I don't know when that will be. Currently I am not holding any AFFY, although I am still long ~350K$ of a bio stock for a medium-term hold. We'll see what happens... I'll post when I exit, good/bad/or ugly but won't post the stock ticker...

g

p.s. AFFY is a textbook example of a black swan and, along with CHTP, is why I am a trader, and not an investor. But if you were following AFFY since the fall, you also could have bought at 2.30 and sold at 4 for a ridiculous gain that day... I probably traded it 10-15 times that day...

[disneysteve]

Nice to see you gambler!

[gambler2075]

Nice to see you gambler!

Thanks. Good to "see" you too :P
Figured I'd stop by once in a while... been busy over the past year (or two?) still working 1/2 time as an ER doc... after I paid my 1/4M$ student loans off from trading profits I decided to work 1/2 time... did a 7 week trip to SE asia, backpacker style, and just finishing up snowboarding season (day 27 was tuesday)... so I have been keeping busy.

AFFY should be an interesting one to watch. I have learned it always takes longer to bounce (if it does) than I expect.

This article was an interesting one to read:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1234751-speculation-on-the-cause-of-the-omontys-recall

chemistfrog on twitter is decently good at playing bounces.

the MF article:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/03/08/steer-clear-of-affymaxs-mysterious-pop.aspx

is a classic type of article I look for as a contrarian to signify that hope is at a nadir. He is definitely not a trader.

-from an email I sent to a fellow trader:

the point is that buying AFFY would not be to hold it until Omontys gets back on the market (if ever)
the point is to buy it BEFORE affymax says anything like "We have possibly figured out what we think might be causing the deaths"... and that PR would be grounds for another 50-75% pop, on huge volume. The question, of course, is when that would happen. Right now, after these huge pops, there usually is a bleedoff for at least a few days, and the odds of a PR on monday is much less than the odds of a bleed-off, imo... I don't think this bleeds for 7 days after the pop, but at least another bleed back to 3.01 or so, imo. I could be totally wrong but that would be where I would re-enter the stock. Right now, the peeps that bought the massive volume up to 4$ are stuck and are scared, but soon enough, imo, they will capitulate and the stock will run back up again. I also believe that the company will issue some sort of PR that would restore some hope and the stock will jump 50% on that, at some point, in the next few weeks. Still, I don't plan on buying any more than 10k shares of AFFY, for now.

The other scenario I envision would be that the stock doesn't do anything and drifts back down to 2.70's or so, for the next few months, as AFFY researches the scenario behind the scenes. Then one day, they announce some positive news, and KABLAM, up 50-75%.

************************
As always... don't risk more than you can afford to lose...

g

[KTP]

LOL!

I had purchased some AFFY a few days ago (just 2000 shares) at $2.40 and sort of forgot about it. I then saw gambler's post about maybe it will dip below $3...I didn't even know I had a profit yet! I guess I should watch my stocks more often.

[gambler2075]

Bought 10k AFFY at 3.29. Holding for a couple of days, possibly.

g

[gambler2075]

Would probably add 100k shares at 2.75... we will see..

[gambler2075]

I think that 3.15-16 support may hold, we will see...

[gambler2075]

Remember this is a speculative position... holding for a possible runup into 3/14 conf call... not risking that much of my portfolio, we will see what happens. They could easily take this under 3 to take out those stop-losses...

g

[gambler2075]

I think there is a good chance they take this under 3 now... because they can. Still holding though.

[gambler2075]

Alright, off to the airport, we will see if double bottom at 3.15 holds... or not. Still holding my 10k at 3.29 and planning to do so for a couple of days... maybe I make 10K$, or lose 5K$... time will tell.

g

[KTP]

I am going to try a different approach. I have the 2000 shares bought for less than $5k, and I am going to try and forget about them for a few months and see if something unlikely happens, like the cause of the reaction was due to a bee in the manufacturing plant and the stock goes back to $16/share.