Good Morning uksausage. I don’t really blend long-term investing potential with short-term trades, but I’ll give my opinion on both sides (that should stay separate).
Near-term
My short position relates to the very near term. $PLUG flagged for me because of a fundamentals-based screen combined with divergences between price and volume across CCI, MACD, and OBV after a three month run. Then when I added it to the watchlist, I saw the news releases having less effect on price. Without a large influx in volume or institutional buy-ins, the next couple weeks/month could see a price decrease. This is a set-up I use to flag small-cap speculative short plays. They tend to have runs on news, then they trickle off over several weeks. It’s not perfect, and sometimes I’m wrong. However, I just have be right a little over 65%. $PLUG’s run on a good quarter might continue, so if the technicals point that way I’ll cut and focus on other plays.
Long-term
I like perspectives in this room on future potential. $PLUG has shipped units, and I’ll be interested to see the long-term performance of those units and the agreements play out. As far as speculative energy plays go, PLUG has the revenue growth edge above Ballard and Fuel Cell. Diversifying between all three is just a way to take advantage of alternative energy sector growth, but I’m not in that arena until the oil production boom starts slowing or regulation starts limiting fossil fuels. My concerns for PLUG’s for long-term potential relate to scalability of manufacturing as with any emerging tech-based manufacturing company, but that really comes down to monitoring operating costs and debt/share equity-financed expansion. I have no doubt this company has promise down the line, but I would want to see their fundamentals evolve more before I buy and hold.
The seven years comment was primarily related to a comment about just needing a spike back to $12 to make a lot of money like the spike before, or the one before that. That's kind of blending long-term price analysis with short-term trading strategies, and it's something I avoid. I can't use pieces of a long-term chart for spikes and ignore the overall decline and split.
I probably won’t touch $PLUG again unless it hits a short screen again or it hits a long screen for growth fundamentals. My investing mentality is basically to build a risk-weighted portfolio of longs (small number of which are speculative), and short when the probability and risk are acceptable.
I hope this clears up my stance. I just wanted to make sure long-term investors understand their risk strategy and the delineation for day traders vs. investors.
