Honor Roll Stocks: $SOMX, $STBK and $APPA
March 18th, 2010 at 5:11 pm Posted by
In effort to bring the entire student body daily promoted stocks, picks on the move and other small caps with news, here are The Dean’s Honor Roll Stocks:
$SOMX – Even the FDA is Nodding Off
Somaxon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOMX), a specialty pharmaceutical company, focuses on the in-licensing and development of proprietary product candidates for the treatment of diseases and disorders in the fields of psychiatry and neurology. Late this morning, $SOMX announced that the U.S. FDA approved the company’s NDA (New Drug Application) for Silenor (dopexin), an insomnia treatment. As a result, $SOMX certainly wasn’t a sleeper, trading more than 20 times its 3 month average volume and climbing as much as 154%, before settling in with a 133.76% gain.
$STBK – Ciao ROMA!
Sterling Banks, Inc. (NASDAQ: STBK) operates as the holding company for Sterling Bank that provides community banking services to the consumer and small to medium-sized businesses in New Jersey. Just after lunch, Roma Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: ROMA) announced it will purchase $STBK for approximately $14.7 million in cash, or approximately $2.52 per share. With the announcement of this merger agreement, $SMTK moved 64.7% to $2.52 on 8 times its 3 month average volume and took home 53.59% today.
$APPA – No, not the Dancing Queen
A.P. Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: APPA) is a specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in developing pharmaceutical products using its proprietary Biochronomer polymer-based drug delivery technology. $APPA has a good start this week, after reporting a net loss for Q4 2009 was $1.9 million, or $0.05 per share, compared with a net loss of $3.9 million, or $0.13 per share, for Q4 2008. On Tuesday, this press release, which reads much more like an advertisement than news, called attention to $APPA as a PowerRatings Stock. Although this stock didn’t see any news or swanky alerts today, $APPA traded 62% more volume than it had in the three previous days of trading. In fact, $APPA saw 13.5 times its 3 month average volume, closing 32.05% in green territory.
And let’s not forget this not-so-bright Dunce of the day:
$SMME – That Smarts!
SmartMetric, Inc. (OTC: SMME.OB) engages in the research and development of a biometric security solution that would authenticate the identity of a person in a self-contained credit card-sized device. On Tuesday, $SMME filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Visa (NYSE: V) and Mastercard (NYSE: MA), with a report detailing the case released yesterday. Although $SMME shares doubled on speculation in the past couple of days, $SMME took a tumble, closing down 54.44% today. Let’s see. Visa and Mastercard have market caps of $70.12 billion and $32.12 billion, respectively, while $SMME is valued at about $3 million. Gee. I wonder who can afford better corporate lawyers—good luck with that one Dunce!
