Technically, MannKind Is a Buy

Technically, you should buy MannKind (Nasdaq: MNKD) right now.

We examined the company using Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD), which is one of the most popular and long-used technical analysis indicators. Technical analysis is the field of buying and selling stocks not based on the underlying merits of a company, but rather on the patterns and formulas around its price movements.

Signal line crossover is one of the more common ways to interpret MACD. It uses a series of moving averages (in this case, nine, 12, and 26 days) to look for bullish and bearish crossovers that indicate a stock has momentum in one direction or another. Below you can find a current chart of MannKind's MACD profile:

Confused? Well, that's preposterous! How could you ever be confused by something as simplistic as a Moving Average Convergence-Divergence chart! OK, we're jesting -- but in all seriousness, this is actually one of the simpler methods for technical analysis.

Still, if you'd strictly followed the rules, seeking out upward and downward momentum, you would have seen the stock move between buy and sell categories a fantastic 17 times!

A better way to size up companies
Here at Fool.com we're more interested in other measures of company value. When we look at MannKind and companies from the same industry, here are the areas that interest us:

Source: Yahoo! Finance and Capital IQ, a division of Standard and Poor's; TTM = trailing 12 months; N/A = not applicable.

We prefer to look at the fundamental drivers of value. Investors should closely watch statistical fields like return on equity as well as qualitative values like competitive advantage and managerial effectiveness. These areas led investors like Warren Buffett and Seth Klarman to decades of outperformance. Buying and holding great companies is the best solution for individual investors to build lasting wealth and achieve their financial goals.

So when you look at MannKind, don't evaluate it for crossing a momentum line. Buy or sell it because:

• For MannKind, it's all about Afrezza, an inhaled insulin that attempts to succeed where other drug companies have failed. Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) famously gave up on its inhalable-insulin treatment Exubera back in 2007 after finding initial sales to be dismal. Shortly thereafter, Novo Nordisk threw in the towel on its phase 3 inhalable as they felt the drug was "unlikely to offer significant clinical or convenience benefits." Beyond nagging concerns over commercial viability, the company must also overcome health concerns that come to the surface during other drug maker's clinical trials. Pfizer clinical tests revealed "an increase in the number of new cases of lung cancer" in patients. The problem appeared among former smokers.
• MannKind claims its drug hasn't seen the change in lung functions that were seen in Pfizer's Exubera trials. Also, Afrezza comes with several other benefits, according to the company. Relative to other inhaled treatments, Afrezza does a better job of closely following the natural insulin spike seen in healthy individuals. So while Afrezza has to live in the shadows of earlier failed inhalable-insulin concepts, the product seems to offer distinct superior qualities that could increase the chance of commercial success.
• The company has managed to slow its spending in recent quarters. Now that MannKind has filed a new request for approval of Afrezza, costs should be moderated. However, for investors, it's important to note that the company is essentially an all-or-nothing proposition. If Afrezza isn't fully approved or doesn't meet commercial success, shareholders will be left with little if any value remaining.

Want to buy MannKind based on technical merits today? Technically, odds are that you should flip and sell MannKind sometime very soon. If that sounds like madness to you, well, we here at the Fool.com agree. In every market decline, technical analysis gets its share of proponents. The cries that "buy-and-hold is dead!" get louder, and individuals race toward schemes that promise greater wealth in a shorter amount of time.

I don't deny that technical analysis could make investors money. In any random short-term transaction, you're essentially playing a 50/50 game of chance. However, at the same time, most technical analysis schemes are a relatively simple science, eliminating the vast complexities of evaluating true company value. However attractive, this theory is ultimately the wrong path for individual investors. Technical analysis relies on long-held beliefs about exploiting momentum and consistent patterns throughout the market.

However, with as much as 75% of market trading now done by Ph.D.-level programmers at massive high-frequency funds, even if opportunities existed, what chance would an individual have to sniff these deals out? With so much volume now driven by these funds, how can you be certain the same rules of patterns still even exist?

I could also point to Massey University's study across 49 countries, which showed that more than 5,000 trading rules add no value. However, the real reason to forget about technical investing is what we mentioned earlier: MannKind crossed the crossover 20 times across the past year! While traders might not buy and sell with each crossing, cases of high momentum are normally short lived. The amount of trading in most technical analysis schemes racks up commission fees and short-term capital gains taxes, eating away at profits. More importantly, it takes away from the idea of holding a portfolio of great companies that can accrue wealth over a long time horizon.

That's why, at Fool.com, we recommend that individual investors establish a portfolio of well-managed companies with strong advantages over their competitors. In the end, we find that to be the best contributor to long-term wealth. More importantly, it'll spare you from sitting bleary-eyed in front of a computer with a Big Gulp full of coffee, frantically buying in and out of companies. But hey, if your idea of protecting your future is charting the ups and downs of Moving Average Convergence-Divergence charts, then MannKind looks like a buy right now. Just don't expect to hold it for very long.

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