RunawayTrader

You know about Doldrums, don’t you? That’s a famous belt of calms and light winds between the northern and southern trade winds of the Atlantic and Pacific. It’s a notorious place where three-masters of yore became becalmed for days, even weeks, trapping sailors who couldn’t find enough wind to escape the tropical prison.

Any way, now that you’ve had your geography lesson, I can report that shares of Dendreon (DNDN) have finally slipped into the Doldrums where they sink in price because there’s no news to revive them. And this drift is likely to continue until the “big news,” whatever it is, is announced sometime in the next couple of weeks.

DNDN is Not For the Faint of Heart

I’ve been picking up more shares of DNDN, 100 here, 100 there, as it slides lower. My experience in waiting for big bangs (mergers, FDA approvals, refunds from the IRS and the like), is that the stock usually fades before the kill date, rather than rises. But what’s important here, as far as I’m concerned, is that I still don’t own so many share that I’ll get banged up if the FDA doesn’t approve their wonder drug for prostate cancer, Provenge.

Still, I notice that my conservatism hasn’t stopped jillions of others from betting big-time on this stock. Those who commented on my last post on this subject, were in at least   1900 shares. But even with that trade, you can drop 20,000 smackers if the miss the prevailing wind and catch a tropical hurricane of sellers instead.

But those writers were real pikers compared to a poster named Karhug, who I chanced to exchange cybermessages with about a year ago. I touched based with her again, wanting to know if she was still in the game. She wrote back:

“I have reduced my position from 67k shares to 50k shares and looking to sell another 10k shares in the low 40’s before final decision and then hold the remaining 40k shares for the very long term.”

That’s what I call, putting your money where your mouth is. DNDN has turned Miss Karlin (I don’t know if that’s a first or last name) into a millionaire and she’ll earn another million if Dendreon gets approval. But as I recall, she first got into this stock when it was selling for less than a Big Mac, so her ultimate risk is really both large and small, depending on your vantage point.

Either way,  here I am, too chicken to place another 2000 shares into the slots, for fear I’ll go broke when I do it.

Yet, I do have a method to my madness. Suppose, just suppose that the FDA turns down Dendreon’s bid, claiming it wants to review the laboratories where patient blood will be immunologized—just to make sure they’re cleaner than New York subway tunnels.

That delay will crater share price. BUT that very act will make final approval, sometime in the future, a virtually sure thing once facilities are deemed acceptable. Yeah, I know, that’s a moronic bit of thinking. But I need to dream up some excuse or I’ll bet the farm on this stock.

And I don’t want to do that. I just want to runaway. And in a cupla’ weeks, I’ll do just that, DNDN, or no DNDN.

Charlie, the RT