Holy moly! I hit the lotto! (sort of)

[wmc1000]

Congrats Fermion hold on for the rocket ride!

 

[Moemg]

Congrats ! Great stock pick !

 

[Fermion]

Thanks.

I may have created a problem with my wife though. She suggested we buy 1000 shares in her Roth and trade it. We bought 1000 at 5.50 and sold them at 6.04 and just rebought them at 5.52. She is clicking the quote refresh button every few seconds which is annoying me because I am trying to play Puerto Rico on boardgamearena.com She was not interested in stock trading before we made $180,000 in one day. What have I done?

edit: And.....she just sold them at $6.02 again. Now she is bragging about her daytrading abilities (where is that eyeroll emoji)

 

[RetireAge50]

Awesome. Time to sell and go sailing️ again? Subsidies were chump change anyway.

 

[kite_rider]

Interesting that you've highlighted SDRL, GILD, and VNDA. I've been in and out of GILD for a long time and have some nice scars from a flirtation with SDRL (youngest fleet in the drilling industry! Yea, right...). Will look into VNDA.

I like to keep a very small part of portfolio set aside for speculation. It's fun in a Vegas sort of way. Plus I end up learning a lot about the latest and (not so)greatest trends this way. Just ask me about my brother's big ICO plans for 'Remit Coin'...

 

[Fermion]

VNDA was a long time ago (2011 or something?) I have not even checked its quote in years.

The only Gilead I have is 1000 shares covered by Jan $70 calls I sold. Pretty much all I am doing is collecting the $520 dividend until my shares are called away in Jan.

I don't want the gain on that trade to come this year (it is about a $7,000 short term capital gain) so will not buy back the calls even though they are trading at little time value because they are so deep.

ACA and taxes are definitely wagging the dog here. Oh well.

 

[FUEGO]

I may have created a problem with my wife though. She suggested we buy 1000 shares in her Roth and trade it. We bought 1000 at 5.50 and sold them at 6.04 and just rebought them at 5.52. She is clicking the quote refresh button every few seconds which is annoying me because I am trying to play Puerto Rico on boardgamearena.com She was not interested in stock trading before we made $180,000 in one day. What have I done?

It's the worst. Been there, done that. You're trying to get your game on and your wife is trying to distract you with the making of mere hundreds of dollars.

 

[kite_rider]

ACA and taxes are definitely wagging the dog here. Oh well.

Kudo's that you can make these bold (and large) trades and still pull off an ACA subsidy. Being scared about a missing paycheck when I was FIRE'd, I ended up writing some 'land contracts' on rental property that I no longer wanted to manage. The interest from them along with a dividend strategy that I didn't actually need has pushed the MAGI for our family of 4 way out of the range of a subsidy.

The market has been amazing this year and I'm not so excited about future prospects so I've been in sell mode. Taxes for 2017 are going to be horrendous and DW has urged me to stop selling since she things it will screw up our son's financial aid prospects as he applies for college. Not that I expect any aid anyway.

So I guess there is always something wagging the dog.

 

[Fermion]

The worst would be a buyout at like $15 a share. We would have to recognize several hundred thousand in short term capital gains plus pay back ACA subsidy for this entire year. Combined those would be around $100,000 in taxes on a $220,000 gain. We have like no deductions.

Better scenario is a slow walk to $15 or $30 by the drug launch in 2021. I can then sell 1000 shares a year for the next decade and use the money as MAGI for ACA.

Imagine financing your whole retirement on one $50,000 purchase of stock...

 

[Texas Proud]

You might be a bit short sighted in tax avoidance... if I had $100K gain today on a spec stock I would take a good amount of it no matter what...


Back in the late 90s I had some stock options that grew to be worth over $100K... I did not want to take them since the taxes were going to be to much for me... well, I watched as the price went down... had to sell them when they matured for about $30K gain... all because I did not want to pay taxes... and this was a mega corp who would not go to zero.... your stock could....


Edit to add... I invested in a biotech on advice from a friend who did cancer research... there was 'great news' in what was happening and they expected the stock to rocket even more than this.... stock never took off... and the research was a dud.... wish I could remember that company... I think it was sold to someone else who was trying some other medical product that had nothing to do with cancer...

 

[Running_Man]

Fermion,
It was a bold call and notice by you that there was more cash per share than value, and management has done what the market has liked, it is basically selling everything it has and does for buying an established Phase III drug for prostate cancer, so now they have created a company that can be invested in for a single treatment therapy and play the odds on success with one company.

If successful it appears profits can be in the 200-300 million a year range or 4-6 dollars per share which translates to between $80 and $180 per share future stock price. If unsuccessful the company will likely go belly up as they plan on purging themselves of everything else they are working on to market this, which I am sure management has been planning for a while and why management was funding the company.

What is such an option worth? They paid $12 million plus 6 million shares (36 million at current prices) or about a dollar a share total, a 160 million dollar bonus payment if the treatment is approved ($4.00 a share) and the company that sold it ABX gets 15 percent of the revenues, I am assuming if successful revenues would be around 2 billion so another 300 million. So the selling company valued the percentage of ownership they were giving up as worth $5.00 a share, while still getting participation upon success and the market is presently valuing that as somewhat higher. The choice to sell or ride the chances of success, with a single point of success or failure it would seem to me to hold such a large single position would give you the greatest chance of great wealth at an optimum it could be 5.4 million dollars.

In the present state though you have been able to get more than double the cash held as of last June.

 

[brokrken]

Congrats on the ride. This is sort of like the ride I've been on with NVDA, except mine has taken much longer. Bought in about 7ish years ago around $10 and been holding ever since all the way up to its current point at about $179. My wife keeps telling me to sell it, but I can't make myself pull the trigger.

 

[kite_rider]

Back in the late 90s I had some stock options that grew to be worth over $100K... I did not want to take them since the taxes were going to be to much for me... well, I watched as the price went down... had to sell them when they matured for about $30K gain... all because I did not want to pay taxes... and this was a mega corp who would not go to zero.... your stock could....

+1 on not letting taxes get in the way of a great gain.

When I was at megacorp stock options were making some of my co-workers millionaires overnight (not me ). Anyway, some of the bright folks took a strategy with incentive stock options (ISO) where they would exercise some options early in the year and hold the stock with the idea that the 'inevitable' gains would make the taxes next April more palatable.

Well, that worked until the stock crashed. One poor guy had to sell his fancy house, fine cars, and may have even declared bankruptcy just to deal with the taxes he was trying to minimize. He was so depressed he couldn't even get his work done anymore and didn't last long at the high pressure boiler room we worked in. So I gained a valuable lesson there; take your gain, pay your crazy taxes, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

 

[Fermion]

This is definitely still a high risk stock but consider what Running_Man has mentioned. This could easily go to $80, $150, maybe even $200 a share especially if they are able to target other indications. Perhaps switching from a chemical warhead to a radioisotope was what they needed to do all along. And there was no value at all assigned to their imaging drug which works amazingly well and seems like it would have value to big pharma.

30,000 shares x $200 = Fermion can't count that high

Check out the results of their imaging drug and this new drug they are going to go to phase 3 with:

 

[Texas Proud]

Congrats on the ride. This is sort of like the ride I've been on with NVDA, except mine has taken much longer. Bought in about 7ish years ago around $10 and been holding ever since all the way up to its current point at about $179. My wife keeps telling me to sell it, but I can't make myself pull the trigger.

That was a good pick... it is a question of how many shares you have bought... if a good number then you might trim what you own and ride the gains...

I was very late to the game, but hold some of this and am hoping to ride it higher... wish I had another one to strap onto!!!

 

[brokrken]

That was a good pick... it is a question of how many shares you have bought... if a good number then you might trim what you own and ride the gains...

I was very late to the game, but hold some of this and am hoping to ride it higher... wish I had another one to strap onto!!!

Unfortunately, I only bought 400. Still, turning 4k into 72k I'll take any day! Let's hope it keeps going.

 

[kite_rider]

This is sort of like the ride I've been on with NVDA, except mine has taken much longer. Bought in about 7ish years ago around $10 and been holding ever since all the way up to its current point at about $179.

I bought NVDA 1,000 shares back on 1/11/11 (loved all those one's!) for TWICE what you paid and was sore about it for years. But not anymore. I'm not selling this one, I added to my position (at a much higher price) last year.

I tend to invest in companies where I know a bit about their product line and like their management. Jensen Huang is tried and true and I expect him to stick around a while and keep driving NVDA up. I also really like Andy Bechtolscheim so have been building a large position in Arista networks (ANET). Elon Musk always seems to thrill me with his unique thoughts, so I'm long TSLA too. I haven't even talked about the products from these great companies, they are the real star.

Love to hear about other's favorite stocks...

 

[bobandsherry]

This is definitely still a high risk stock but consider what Running_Man has mentioned. This could easily go to $80, $150, maybe even $200 a share especially if they are able to target other indications.

Congrats - Getting out is just as much as a gamble as getting in - and perhaps even more so. Might keep VRX in mind as to what goes up can go down.

• $15 in 1995
• $15 in 2010
• $250 in 2015
• $14 today

 

[sirsavesalot]

Ok, this is coming from a guy that doesn't do much trading but can accept some risk. I'm still wanting to kick myself for not listening to my Dad when Netflix was at $52/share about 3 years ago and he told me to dump $10k into it. I almost did, but thought it could tank. That would be worth $100k today. I did get lucky back around 2011 or 2012 jumping in on BLIAQ (Blockbuster pink sheet stock) for $13k and selling 2 days later for a $40k profit. No joke. Then the next day, the SEC halted all trading for 30 days, it reopened at 90% less and a ton of people lost a lot of money.

This is looking like one of those opportunities that could turn into something big. I'm 36 in a low cost of living area and have almost $350k in accounts, all in the last 8 years. I could throw $10k at this, and if it goes to zero, not lose too much sleep. If it works out, it could take years off my retirement age, which I'm already focusing in on 50.

I'm only looking for opinions and even if you're wrong, will not care. Do you guys see this jumping up and down for a while or should I strike while the iron's hot? I have done about an hour's worth of research on this tonight and everything is pointing up.

Also, I have about $50k in an ESPP (employee stock purchase program) with Fidelity that I will need to sell some off to fund this. Could this be done quickly? Say, sell $10k of my company stock with a market order, then immediately purchase $10k of Endocyte? Or do the funds have to settle for a while? I'd just do a quick checking account to Fidelity transfer BUT I just dropped $12k cash on the steal of a century car purchase that just fell into my lap and haven't had a chance to recharge my checking account.

Thanks for any and all input!

 

[Fermion]

I think if you had gotten in at $1.20 like I did it would have been a lot better risk vs reward (they had $2.77 in cash!). I was just waiting around for a buyout or a drug to hit and they just went and teamed up on a very promising drug. Maybe they read my post on er.org about taking over the company and got scared!

At the current price of $5.80, it is pretty risky. The upside is they have several trials of this drug going on in different parts of the world (compassion trials) so updates are going to be coming a lot faster than a typical bio pre stage 3. Normally we would not get any news until late 2018 early 2019 but with this drug we are going to see news pop up now and then about efficacy.

It possibly will pull back into the $4 range after things settle and then pop to $7 on the first of the news. It should go to $8 or $9 when they officially enroll stage 3. Of course at any time if they halt a trial so everyone can get on the drug because it is working so well, expect the price to jump to $20.

On the downside they are going to now burn through cash very fast. I bet they are near out of money in 2018 and will have to dilute. This is not a big problem if the shares are trading at $10 but would be horrible if they were trading at $1.20.

This is still about as risky as a scratch and win ticket so be careful! I have $180,000 riding on this but it is all house money and I have fully realized my initial investment. I can't sell because of tax reasons and simple greed. I will sell $23,000 Jan 1 2018 to fund that year's ACA MAGI in full.

edit: I am also going to put out there that there is no rush. There is always a pullback in these stocks. It will go back to $4 at some point, even if it is just intraday.

edit2: Another little side note. Their CAR-T partnership with Seattle Childrens is with the co-founder of JUNO. That stock is similar to KITE, who was bought by Gilead for 11 billion. JUNO is 5 billion right now and not anywhere near approval. Bio is crazy.

edit3: Another little note. At one point ECYT was $26 a share and then dropped eventually to the $1.17. You can lose all your money in bio.

 

[Texas Proud]

Unfortunately, I only bought 400. Still, turning 4k into 72k I'll take any day! Let's hope it keeps going.

I only have 200... and bought for much more than you did...

But, I have traded them a few times... will have to calculate my total gain at some point in time...

 

[Fermion]

See, here is that pullback I was thinking about. Trading at $4.90 in pre-market, down 17% from yesterday close. I have not seen any negative news as yet but am looking. It could just be a bear raid or just overbought.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I wish all who are playing this one out much success. I will be watching from afar.

 

[Fermion]

I wish all who are playing this one out much success. I will be watching from afar.

You would be wise. This is what they call "HIGH risk"

 

[bobandsherry]

Ok, this is coming from a guy that doesn't do much trading but can accept some risk. I'm still wanting to kick myself for not listening to my Dad when Netflix was at $52/share about 3 years ago and he told me to dump $10k into it. I almost did, but thought it could tank. That would be worth $100k today.

Something doesn't seem right in your math. $52 -> $185 = 3.5x increase. How do you get $10K -> $100K, a 10x increase?