Hattie, I don't have private reply so I will answer you publicly.
Why did I sell in the 19s ? That was easy. I had too much of mnta in my portfolio and I needed to get it back into a reasonable proportion. You are aware how volatile it is, can be so there is no guarantee it won't see the teens again.
Btw, I was a veteran of elan , from 2003 to 2010. I made a lot of money off elan but honestly and more importantly, I left even more on the table.
Do I have regret that I sold mnta at 19 only to see it go over 20, of course I do. But that is the sort of self control one has to learn/master in this game.
I bought a small stake in Amrn (6K)at around 8 in Jan 11 along with Exel (6K) (which zipman loves. I only say this because he is the "buy on dips" guy when it comes to exel ). At one time I was down 20% on amrn . Then one day in Apr 2011, it went up to 16 and I had a 100% gain. Retailers especially late comers went giddy with vision of buy out in the mid 20s and 30s etc .
You have to understand the psychological reasoning here. These people came it late (after the release of the P3 Anchor trial ). They didn't want to bear the uncertainty of Anchor outcome , I did . Thus the only reason amrn would go up even higher imo would be a buy out at a premium by a big pharma.
I sold out in the 16s and 17s only to see it go to 20 and then fall back.
The reason I sold at 16 is because I did a quick calculation on possible future sales using Lovaza current numbers and given a share count of 160M , 16 was a fair number to me.
If it looked like I am right on amrn or mnta, that degree of rightness is only momentarily because nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. I have learned to control my greed ; you will have to do the same if not done already. I do believe that mnta will by X2 sometime in the future.
When to double down and when to leave money on the table for others is a lesson only learned through wrenching personal experiences that can't be passed on verbally.
One has to live through the experience and more importantly one has to be honest with oneself and accept one's responsibility. Without admission of error, there is little possibility for learning.
A few weeks ago I caught this little tid bit on TeeVee. I saw a guy quoted Oprah that she knows of nobody changing because of facts. All changes are done through the heart or emotions. That is indeed very true.
AI
