Cerus (CERS)

Company

"Cerus Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company that develops and commercializes novel, proprietary products in the fields of blood safety and immunotherapy to provide safer, more effective medical options to patients in areas of substantial unmet medical needs. In the field of immunotherapy, the company is employing its proprietary attenuated Listeria vaccine platform to develop a series of novel therapies to treat cancer, and it is applying its proprietary Killed But Metabolically Active technology platform in research and development of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines for infectious diseases. In the field of blood safety, the company is developing and commercializing the INTERCEPT Blood System, which is based on the company's proprietary Helinx technology and is designed to enhance the safety of donated blood components by inactivating viruses, bacteria, parasites and other pathogens, as well as potentially harmful white blood cells. INTERCEPT, INTERCEPT Blood System and Helinx are trademarks of Cerus Corporation." (company website)

CERS 3-month stock chart

Buy

25-Oct-06. Early in the year CERS began a long downtrend that appears to be broken (sidebar). I had placed a buy order at a price I thought would be a reasonable pullback from the latest high. It seems I overpaid.

  • Price momentum (PPO) — great improvement over three months, rapid pickup in last month
  • Trend (ADX) — very strong, although ebbing buying pressure (+DI) is a bit worrisome
  • Money flow (CMF) — flowing in after a long period of outflow
  • Relative strength (RSI) — was strong, but now oversold (StochRSI)
  • Volume — decline has leveled off, and recent updays have been on higher than normal volume

Sell

gain Bottom line
16%

27-Nov-06. When CERS hit a new high at $8.89, that brought the trailing stop up to $7.81. In today's sour market, CERS fell enough to trigger the sale.

The chart still looks strong for the long term. The main question is how far it will pull back before resuming its climb. It could stop at the 200-day moving average, but if it breaks that I fear it might not stop until it got close to the 50-day average.

CERS 1-year chart
CERS 1-year chart