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It's a big day for NutriSystem Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:NTRI) shareholders, as shares are up nearly 25% in after hours trading. This comes after an announcement ...
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NutriSystem Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRI) is surging on word that it scored an introductory 14-day pact with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) at retail and locations and the walmart.com site. Full details are at 24/7 Wall Street but the stock closed at   $15.05 today. As of 5:11 PM EST we have shares up almost 15% at $17.30 on over 150,000 shares in the after-hours session. Average daily volume is only 352,000 shares and the 52-week high is $18.30. -JON OGG
Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) was raised to the Conviction Buy List at Goldman Sachs. This replaces Fifth Third Bancorp. (NASDAQ: FITB), although FITB was maintained as a BUY rating as well. Interestingly, both shares are higher. Capital One is up 4% at $34.52 on 66,000 shares at 9:00 AM EST, while Fifth Third is up 1.6% at $9.51 on about 25,000 shares. It is very rare for a stock getting booted off that Conviction Buy List to rise, even if the underlying sentiment and call remains positive on the replaced stock. Watch for volume to rise sharply in these as the specialist opens more and more shares up for trading closer to the 9:30 AM EST Opening bell. JON OGG
Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) is surging this morning considering that it is a super-regional bank without a news release of its own. Its shares are up 4% at $27.35 but only on about 350,000 shares as of 8:54 AM EST. This was raised at Goldman Sachs to BUY and that appears to be exactly what traders are doing. Interestngly enough, this stock has petered out when it gets north of $28.00 and we could not help but noticing in this weekend’s unusual suspects that traders were buying downside protection via put options ahead of earnings season. With an average volume of over 50 million shares, you can count on the trading volume to pick up drastically after the specialist-led NYSE stock gets closer and closer to the 9:30 AM EST opening bell. -JON OGG
Amicus Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: FOLD) is going to be a top stock to watch Monday morning. This one lost 24.7% of its value down to $6.40 on Friday evening after the close and traded some 59,900 shares in the after-hours session. The Phase II results in its Plicera(TM) type 1 Gaucher disease treatment showed that clinically meaningful improvements in key measures of this disease were seen in only 1 of 18 patients who completed the study, while 1 additional subject discontinued treatment because of an adverse event. Needless to say, the data is very far short of what the company was hoping for and Amicus does not expect to advance Plicera into Phase III studies. The company is of course changing its 2009 guidance and, based on its current projections of net operating expense, Amicus now expects to end 2009 with approximately $70 to $80 million in cash.
For a reference on this, Amicus has a 52-week trading range of $6.26 to $15.26 and trades only about 35,000 shares per day. Its market cap before the 24.7% drop was listed as $192.4 million. It is impossible to know on Sunday morning if the stock will break those 52-week lows or not, but there were trades that went out under $6.00 and some even under $5.00 in the after-hours session before the stock settled in. We do not count the after-hours sessions in measuring 52-week highs and lows, but by some counts this one has already busted through its 52-week lows.
We do not see any stock options available in this name, although the stock has performed atrociously over the last two weeks. Its most recent short interest was also listed as over 1.4 million shares or about 61 days to cover, so this will be very active on Monday despite and average volume this low.
JON C. OGG
There is very little trading action in the pre-market as investors await news of the September unemployment rate. The most grim estimates are that the economy lost another 250,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate rose to 10%.
Douglas A. McIntyre