Your stock just took a nosedive -- but don't panic. First, let's see whether it had good reason to fall. Sometimes, panic-fueled drops can make excellent buying opportunities. Here's the latest crop of cratered stocks that could provide a possibility for profit:
Stock | CAPS Rating | Monday's Change |
|---|---|---|
| Stillwater Mining | **** | (22.2%) |
| Sky-mobi | * | (12.7%) |
| Renren | * | (9.7%) |
With the Greek bailout only a stopgap measure and fears of a spreading default contagion, the market dropped 151 points yesterday, or 1.2%. So stocks that went down by even larger percentages are pretty big deals.
The devil's in the details
It's not so much that palladium and platinum miner Stillwater Mining's purchase of Peregrine Metals diversifies it more into gold and copper that caused the stock to crater. Rather, it's the huge premium it's paying for the privilege.
Junior miner Peregrine was trading for less than $1 a share on the Canadian exchanges, but Stillwater agreed to buy it for around $3.16 a share. While it gives Stillwater access to its Argentinean Altar gold and copper mine, it represents a huge premium, well above what other deals have gone for. Stillwater would beg to differ. It's not looking at the financial aspects of the arrangement, but rather what copper goes for, and at $0.038 per pound, it's right in line with other deals.
I'd consider this a buying opportunity. Stillwater also announced preliminary second-quarter results that were quite strong, with production up almost 26% and revenues likely to hit $222 million, decidedly better than the $202 million Wall Street was expecting. And conditions are ripe for further improvements.
South Africa and Zimbabwe account for 80% of the world's platinum group metals, and there's talk about nationalizing and requiring domestic ownership of investments in those countries. Stillwater is the largest PGM miner outside South Africa or Russia, while North American Palladium
Either or both stand to profit if those restrictive plans move forward, and Polymet Mining
On CAPS, 93% of the 596 members who rated Stillwater have marked it to outperform the broad market averages. Mine for additional insights on the Stillwater Mining CAPS page and tell us whether you think this purchase will pay off.
Knowledge is power
Falling back to earth is an all-too-common occurrence when it comes to Chinese small-cap stocks. Investors in Chinese mobile phone app store Sky-mobi are getting a double dose of such pure oxygen, seeing their shares deflate all over again.
Sky-mobi touts itself as China's biggest app store for mobile phones, but short-sellers question just how big is big, and whether there's really a future in selling apps to low-end, non-smartphone consumers.
A better bet would be for investors to investigate the prospects of companies like Glu Mobile
Since 60% of the CAPS members rating Sky-mobi see it as underperforming the broad market averages, it remains to be seen whether it has an app for turning around public opinion. Let us know on the Sky-mobi CAPS page whether you think it still has game.
Even in the East
Not so much fraud, but bubble. That seems to be the thinking about another Chinese IPO, social-networking site Renren. Its overhyped IPO got it off to a good start, but it's pretty much been all downhill from there, even if it managed to stage a small bounce higher last month. People were willing to overlook its overstated user base numbers and that its financial compliance standards don't make the grade.
So maybe investors are having second thoughts about giving Renren the benefit of the doubt. We might not have the smoking gun of fraud here, but we've got plenty of yellow flags waving at us.
Highly rated CAPS All-Star TSIF basically says that, even ignoring all the warnings, it's impossible to justify the growth scenarios being bandied about:
Regardless of how you argue the growing Chinese population and increasing Internet use you can't fit Renren into any reasonable valuation even assuming maximum growth. Growth takes overhead and Renren's IPO gave them some cash, but not as much as many think. 10 Million of the IPO shares belonged to insiders who are now out spending their millions. The market cap fluctuating from $3 Billion to $10 Billion on a whim and back again is wishful thinking.
Follow along on developments by adding Renren to your watchlist, and see if it can network its way to respectability.
Ready for a resurrection
Just because your stock has taken a beating doesn't mean it's going to roll over and die. Markets are known for overreacting. A closer look on Motley Fool CAPS at what's happened to your stock can give you an edge over investors who just react to the market's lead. You can decide for yourself whether it's ready to come back from the dead.
