Cracking The Code: What Else Is Slammed, Thominator?

By THOM CALANDRA

TIBURON, Calif. (TC) -- Good morning, Voldy Morts. Today's question, from the buyside book of books that is in the works, goes like this: What else, besides Airspan, is on your slammed list, TC?

If you're following Actionable & LARGE: Cracking The Buyside Code, you fathom that mega-returns almost always companion (I use that as a verb) with PAIN. As in the agony of being early on an idea, or more exuberant than most other investors, or temporarily misguided, or caught in a downdraft (or an updraft if you're one of those shorties, which I am not).

At any rate, give the Airspan story a glance in the previous entry; it's in the intro to Actionable & LARGE: Cracking The Buyside Code, my current book project and something I intend to serialize for downloading if a publisher does not come along soon and scoop it up. You'll see the intro in the previous entry and at ThomCalandra.com.

Most of us know if we bought a company at $5 a share, almost surely we will get a chance to get it at an even more actionable $4 and $3. That's the nature of sales and supplies and the Jamba flavor of the day. Few of us can indicate one precise buyside pivot point, one that stands for years and years. Am I correct? I mean, you'd have to be Lon Chaney, dancing with The Queen. Heck, Lon Chaney Junior, dancing with TQ.

All things good come to those who crack the BUYSIDE CODE. Airspan as we know was perhaps one of the most painful stocks stories I'd come across in 10 years (Did I ever tell you the story about MarketWatch? It's in Actionable & LARGE!)

As good friend Walter K. Lopez tells me from Santa Fe, New Mexico, gazing at the frozen surface of The Downs just outside town, "The only difference between the racetrack and the market is in the market, yer git ter wash 'em cum 'round 'gin."

To get actionable and LARGE requires dedication and knowledge of your chosen stock (or piece of land or collectible or metal). Three weeks ago, what happened with Airspan, the stock smacking against an all-time low and then rising 30 percent or so, happened to several others in the ThomInAtor family port(folio). In fact, the so-called bounceback happened to many of the names in life sciences, mining, new generation Internet and retail, nearly all in the market capitalization segment of $1 billion and lower.

One of them was Monogram Biosciences (MGRM), a diagnostics company that has been causing me PAIN for as far back as I can remember. See, the difference is this is PAIN with possible LARGE GAIN. I believe in cancer and HIV diagnostics, thus I believe in one of the technology leaders in the field, Monogram -- even if the company appears to put investors on the same track as the sanitation man who disposes of the used test tubes!

-- Thom Calandra in Tiburon

-- Thom Calandra in Tiburon