Much of what applies to BAC also applies to Sun Life and Manulife. If you were lucky enough to catch SLF at just under $15, or chased it up, you now have $7 in the trade in little more than a week. Not with MFC if you bought at the suggested price of $14 t0 $12 or lower (Depends how much lower).
Ultimately both stock can go another $5 or more up. Here are both charts.
Back on Jan 27 (you can look it up) I suggested Bank of America would be a buy at $5 or less. It got down to $2.50 or something like that , but suppose you had bought it at $5, then under my little rule you would sell $6.50 as that represents a 30% gain (I do not use “automatic†stop losses). It traded above that so you should be out , but I have little doubt that that is not the case. Nobody follows rules and that is perhaps not a bad thing, it is up to you what rule you set for yourself, what counts is that you have one. Here is the chart.
It is certainly possible that this one goes to $7.50 , and perhaps much further. It is after all too big to fail and now that central bankers actually take it upon themselves to talk up the markets, who knows.
Bank of Italy , as it used to be called , has taught me lots in the 5 years or so that I was there, first as a credit officer, then as one of two in their Global Treasury Management group, a consulting outfit very much like McKinsey & Co without the BS. BAC almost went bankrupt just after I joined. Here is the chart.
The little red arrow is when I joined, the next one when I left. So what does that look like in more detail?
Not that much different from what it has just done, losing about 85%, instead of 95%. More to the point, it took years to get back on its feet! So what is the moral of this story.?
1. There is nothing knew under the sun – so forget about “this time is differentâ€- if you have not seen it you probable have not looked well enough.
2. Black Swans know where you live and will more often than not visit you twice in a life-time even if the “probability†of that happening is 1 in 10 billion.
3. The difference between being filthy rich and just getting by is not always smarts as much as luck, as the alumni of A.E. Ames and other such venerable and distinguished “firms†can tell you.
4. On second thought, maybe silly little rules are good after all. ! Make your own if you wish but stick to them.
On Feb 10 (see previous comments, they can be retrieved by putting PFE in the search engine!), Pfizer looked like a buy under $13 but given the overall stock market it might overshoot by one or two dollars (it did by 1 1/2 to about $11.62) so perhaps you bought at $12.50. from there we are up two dollars so one should still be in it. I would un till something else derails the thought , wait for at least 30% (16.25) or better yet, the 200 day moving average ( yellow) at about $18. The trigger for this move was the phase whatever trial for a pancreatic drug that was stopped in order for the placebo taking check group to join the party ( pancreatic cancer is for all intents and purposes the end, period.). My late father was once the CEO of Philips- Duphar, one of the largest Dutch pharma companies, and by osmosis I have learned from him that this is not a very transparent business as you do not necessarily get what you see. There was, and perhaps still is, a small Canadian company that worked on a similar product and , if I remember correctly , you could extend a patient’s life by perhaps at the most a few months at a cost of $30.000 or so. Not the kind of stuff blockbusters are made of. But in the mean time enjoy the ride, this sector has been beaten down for about 10 years now.
I missed buying this one back in 2000. Would have been great but maybe fortune is smiling on us again. Here is the big chart.
With a one year high of $33.85 to a low recently of $7.26, no lack of movement here. Short-term a break-out may just have taken place.
Not withstanding the fact that stops can work against you, I would use a stop on this at about $6.90 a little under the low and I would buy at the market right here. Upside potential is quite real at a minimum of about $14