Email : info@otcjournal.com
URL : http://www.otcjournal.com
To
OTC Journal Members:
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Market Comment |
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In our last several editions we have
been reminding members that different markets favor different trading styles.
In the last Bull Market you could buy stocks and make money. Then you could
buy them at higher levels and still make money. Momentum ruled the day.
Stocks cannot get momentum in today's
market environment. Volume has dried up to pathetic levels. Traders have
cob webs growing off their phones as even hedge funds are not active these
days. In short, the market is frozen like a deer in the headlights. Everyone
who was compelled to sell has done so, and no one is buying. Economic indicators
continue improving, but the news is dominated by potential terrorist threats,
Arthur Andersen criminal trials, and Merrill Lynch $100 million settlements.
Common sense tells us the environment should be improving for stocks, but
paranoia rules the day driven by the headlines.
We strongly recommend you focus on
several companies you like, and accumulate when the price is down and volume
is low. Positive developments will eventually yield price surges, and astute
buyers can be sellers under those conditions. A good strategy might be
to sell halfyour position on surging prices, keeping that capital available
for more attractive entry levels. If the stock continues gaining ground,
you still own half. More likely in today's market, the surge will be met
with resistance, and the stock will pull back and trade quietly.
The OTC Journal will try to
alert you to low risk entry levels when they develop. However, there may
be no news accompanying our idea. When there is news you can be a seller.
We will still bring you the news on companies we cover, but it could be
during price and volume surges. Ultimately you have to be the judge because
it's your money.
Our apologies to members who may
have received multiple editions of the OTC Journal over the last
month. We have installed new hardware and software. This is our first edition
with the new system, and hopefully the problem is solved.
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Energy
Power (AMEX: EGY) Rockets Up the Charts- AMEX Listing Finally Granted |
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Pop the champagne corks and start
the party. Energy Power finally got its American Stock Exchange
listing after a process which took a full year. The news came out yesterday
about mid day, and the market responded with a bang. The stock opened at
$3,
and closed at $3.90 on nearly 1/2 million shares, five times normal
volume these days.
This is a prime example of a quiet
buying opportunity. The stock has been drifting down to levels not seen
in months on low volume. Last week you could have bought it anytime for
$3. The company has been extremely quiet, not wanting to rock the boat
with news that might delay the listing further.
The stock traded to a high of $4.75
today, and has now settled in to the $4 range. The symbol has been changed
from EYPSF to EGY, and the stock no longer trades on the
OTC Bulletin Board. This will have no effect on those holding the stock
in brokerage accounts.
Stand by for more information flow
from the company now that the listing has finally been obtained. We still
maintain our price target of $6 this year.
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Diomed's
(AMEX: DIO) EVLT Featured in Forbes Magazine |
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Diomed, unlike Energy Power,
is not trading well today. When the company came public in February the
stock traded 250,000 to 500,000 shares every day. Today the stock traded
17,700 shares, and drifted down just under $4. We believe this stock is
at the perfect level to accumulate. Our price target remains at $10 this
year, and if it is achieved it will probably be in the October to December
time frame.
Despite the lack of interest, their
revolutionary new EVLT (EndoVenous Laser Treatment) for varicose
veins quietly continues to gain market share and garner interest.
This month's edition of Forbes
Magazine has an article on new treatments for varicose veins, and EVLT
is prominently featured. Below is a reprint of the article, but the are
also pictures to view. You can click
here to access the article on Forbes' web site, but you
have to register to access the article. Registration is free and Forbes
is an excellent publication, so it is worth your time.
Here is the URL for the article:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/0527/173.html
Here is the article in its entirety:
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Handsome From the Knees Up
Alan Farnham, 05.27.02
Fit? Buff? Tanned? You can be all
three and still get varicose veins. Some new procedures offer relief.
To take exception to the eminent
T.S. Eliot, May, not April, is the cruelest month. That's when 25
million Americans, including healthy, fit adults in their 30s and 40s,
confront a disturbing reality: varicose veins. There, on newly naked legs,
popping out for all the world to see, are veins that might look tolerable
on Spandex-stockinged matron, but not on a hard-bodied go-getter.
If the swelling ranks of aging Americans
needed a varicose-vein poster boy, Clint Eastwood would do fine. Like many
of the 20% of sufferers who are male, Clint, despite
much golfing and tennis-playing, developed lower legs that looked like
they had snakes wrapped around them. Though getting exercise and watching
one's weight can help stave off the condition, they don't guarantee against
it. Fortunately, new procedures are catching on that promise better
relief with less agony than any previously available.
Stephen O'Connor, a New York City
financial planner, used a gym four times a week, swam and taught scuba
diving, but he watched helplessly as ropy blue lines snaked up his left
thigh. He gave up wearing shorts. By the time he was in his 40s, he was
suffering nighttime cramps so severe he called the pain "the shark."
His doctor explained the cause. The
saphenous vein, the culprit in about 70% of varicose cases, runs from ankle
to groin and is supposed to return deoxygenated blood from the lower extremities
to the heart. For a variety of reasons, including heredity, injury
or, in women, hormonal changes resulting from pregnancy, valves inside
the vein fail to close properly. Blood begins pooling in the legs, where
it exerts pressure on surrounding tissue, causing pain, swelling, skin
discoloration or even ulcers.
O'Connor didn't want to undergo the
same procedure his father had endured--vein stripping. This is every
bit as grisly as it sounds. An incision is made at both ends of the
vein. A wire is inserted. One end of the vein is secured to the wire. The
wire then is withdrawn, and the vein ripped out. Nerve endings and neighboring
tissue go along for the ride. It costs about $2,500 per leg, and is no
more painful than your average threshing accident. "I'd never seen him
in pain like that before," recalls O'Connor. Full
recuperation can take a month, while
the body heals and reroutes blood flow through other veins.
O'Connor instead went with a year-old
laser procedure performed by Dr. Robert Min of Weill Medical College of
Cornell University in New York. Min made a small incision in O'Connor's
knee, inserting a catheter up the saphenous vein. With O'Connor under local
anesthetic and conscious, Min fired up a laser located in the catheter's
tip. He then withdrew it, the laser's heat collapsing and sealing off the
vein on the way out. The 45-minute procedure, O'Connor recalls, caused
"a billionth of a second of discomfort."
He returned to work immediately.
Since then he's been free of attacks and again wears shorts. It cost O'Connor
a little less than $2,000 per leg when he had the procedure done in August,
2000, with two-thirds of it covered by insurance. Today the cost would
be more like $3,000.
Gregory Myers, a 40-year-old pharmacist
outside Salt Lake City, first noticed swelling in his ankles; later,
skin lesions that wouldn't heal. When he accidentally knocked a scab
off, "blood shot out like out of a squirt gun." He taped one of his daughter's
maxi pads over the spot and took himself to the nearest med center.
Vascular surgeon Dr. Kenneth Granke told him he had varicose veins and,
like any other patient, had several options.
One was to postpone surgery. Most
people with varicose veins can live with the condition practically
indefinitely, if they wear elastic stockings to counteract the pressure
in their legs and elevate their feet whenever possible. But Granke also
described a procedure cleared in 1999 by the Food & Drug Administration:
radio-frequency occlusion, also known as Closure. It is similar to the
laser treatment but uses a catheter emitting radio waves at 460 kilohertz
to heat the vessel walls, causing them to shrink and collapse. Granke
prefers it to laser treatment, believing the heat to be better diffused.
"I had it done on a Friday, went
to my kids' soccer game on Saturday, rode an exercise bike Sunday
and was back at work on Monday," says Myers. His only discomfort was
a sensation akin to a groin-muscle pull, but it went away in two days.
There was an almost immediate decrease in the swelling of his ankles.
The skin color of his legs improved, and his lesions healed entirely.
Cost: about $3,000 per leg.
Even after the saphenous vein is
closed or stripped, further treatment of small
superficial veins also may be necessary,
explains Dr. Mark Adelman, assistant
professor of surgery at New York
University Medical Center. The newest tactic for handling leftover
trouble is transilluminated powered phlebectomy, or TriVex. Its creator,
British medical device firm Smith & Nephew, received FDA approval at
the end of 1999. Two probes, one a light source, the other a Roto-Rooter-style
grinder, are thrust just beneath the skin, each through a separate stab
incision. In a darkened room, the surgeon uses the light source to
illuminate offending veins and the grinder to chew them up and suck
them out. Adelman considers it an improvement over other treatments
requiring multiple incisions: "You get a whole thigh's worth of veins through
just two ports."
Though far less invasive than stripping,
these procedures are still relatively new. To date there's only one
published study in the U.S. (by Dr. Robert A. Weiss of Johns Hopkins University)
comparing laser with radio-frequency. Its conclusion: In tests on animals,
radio, so far, resulted in less tenderness and bruising.
No matter what treatment you elect,
insurers usually won't reimburse for them without proof of medical need,
which typically requires a $150 ultrasound exam to determine whether the
valves in your saphenous veins indeed have gone kerflooey.
Sources for Further Information:
VARICOSE VEINS AND THEIR TREATMENT.
American College of Phlebology,
www.phlebology.org; 510-834-6500. Society of Vascular Technology: www.svtnet.org;
301-459-7550.
RADIO-FREQUENCY OCCLUSION (CLOSURE).
Catheter that uses heat generated
by radio waves to close and seal the
vein. About 200 doctors in the U.S. currently offer it. VNUS Medical
Technologies:
www.vnus.com; 877-883-VEIN.
ENDOVENOUS LASER.
Similar to Closure, but
the catheter's heat is generated by a laser. Diomed:
www.diomed-lasers.com;
978-475-7771.
TRIVEX.
A mechanical and optical device
that when inserted beneath the surface of the skin allows physicians
to detect, grind up and suck out enlarged veins. Smith & Nephew:
www.smith-nephew.com; 978-749-1000.
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