Today’s EU summit in Brussels has so far failed to live up to expectations with Germany refusing to soften its stance on common euro area bonds, an idea supported by French President Francois Hollande.

Meanwhile, former Prime Minister of Greece Lucas Papademos told Dow Jones Newswires that it is possible that “preparations are being made to contain the potential consequences of a Greek euro exit”.

The greenback received more support from a decision by the results of the Bank of Japan’s policy meeting.

The BoJ has decided against expanding its stimulus programme, while there was speculation that the central bank could adjust its monetary policy to support economic growth. 

Gold traded at US$1,540 this afternoon, down US$27 from Tuesday’s close. Silver slipped 78 cents to US$27.42/oz and platinum dropped US$26 to US$1,415/oz.

The top fallers in the sector were:

Serabi Gold (LON:SRB), down 13.5 percent at 7.8 pence at midday

Petropavlovsk (LON:POG), down 9 percent at 381.46 pence

Orosur Mining (LON:OMI), down 7.5 percent at 37.14 pence

Central Rand Gold (LON:CRND), down 4 percent at 0.68 pence

In addition, German central bank Bundesbank released a statement, saying the fall-out from a Greek euro exit was manageable, while indicating that the country is unlikely to receive more financial aid if it fails to impose further spending cuts.

It was hoped that Germany would change its stance on common euro area bonds at today’s EU summit, however, that now appears to be highly unlikely.

A report by Bloomberg quoted deputy finance minister of Germany Thomas Steffen as saying that the German economy was not strong enough to underwrite the debts of Europe’s peripheral economies.

Today’s inventories data provided little support to crude futures, showing that oil stocks in the US added 0.9 million barrels last week, reaching 382.5 million barrels.

In the meantime, Iran agreed to let UN inspectors into the country and grant access to its military base in Parchin, which is allegedly used as a weapon test site.

The Middle Eastern country, which is accused of illegally developing a nuclear weapon, has been hit by a series of sanctions by Europe and the US, resulting in a decline in its oil exports.

US light, sweet crude for July delivery, currently the most actively traded contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), dropped US$1.17 to US$90.68/barrels in morning trade in New York.

July Brent crude slipped US$1.80 to US$106.61/barrel on the ICE Exchange this afternoon.

Today’s top risers in the oil and gas sector were:

Cove Energy (LON:COV), up 11.5 percent at 249.5 pence at midday

Bahamas Petroleum (LON:BPC), up 7.5 percent at 7.4 pence

Matra Petroleum (LON:MTA), up 5.5 percent at 2.6 pence

Gulfsands Petroleum (LON:GPX), up 5 percent at 103.25 pence

The top fallers were:

Frontera Resources (LON:FRR), down 12.5 percent at 0.661 pence at midday

PetroNeft (LON:PTR), down 8.5 percent at 7.1 pence

Oilex (LON:OEX), down 7 percent at 8.37 pence

Caza Oil & Gas (LON:CAZA), down 7 percent at 6.75 pence

Gold Oil (LON:GOO), down 5.5 percent at 5.07 pence

Range added nearly one pence to close at 7.45 pence per share on Tuesday, while Red Emperor climbed two pence to 17.5 pence after both companies announced that their directors bought shares.

Executive director of Range Peter Landau has acquired 750,000 shares in the firm worth A$87,909, taking his stake to 13.95 million shares, or 0.61 percent of the company.

Meanwhile, managing director Marcus Edwards-Jones has purchased 150,000 shares worth A$18,060 to increase his shareholding to 0.15 percent.

On the same day, Red Emperor said its director Greg Bandy bought 400,000 shares for US$91,765.

Only a week ago, Landau said the Shabeel-1 well in Puntland, Somalia, could produce up to 130 million barrels of recoverable oil.

His comments came after Range announced that drilling of Shabeel-1 had been suspended for further testing and that logs showed up to three metres of potential hydrocarbon pay.

Prior to that, data from the well indicated a 12 to 20 metre zone of significant hydrocarbon pay.

“The zone needs to be commercially flow tested and this will be undertaken after the completion of the second well, Shabeel North, which will spud early June,” he said in an interview with Open Briefing.

Whilst the market and short term traders may have been anticipating further success in the deeper sections of the well, what we have discovered is extremely significant and the chances of a commercial hydrocarbon operation in Puntland are far greater now than when the well was spudded.

A couple more oil and gas stocks benefitted from share purchases today.

Gulfsands Petroleum (LON:GPX) said Waterford Finance & Investment has increased its shareholding to 19.29 percent from 15 percent, while Bahamas Petroleum (LON:BPC) received a vote of confidence from its non-executive chairman, who acquired a stake at a premium to the current market price.

Adrian Collins, who did not previously own shares in the company, has bought 200,000 shares in the company at a price of 7.12 pence per share worth £14,240.

Earlier this month, Bahamas got a boost from the results of the Bahamas election.

Perry Christie secured more votes than his opponent Hubert Ingraham, who opposed drilling in the Bahamas, to become the new prime minister.

Ingraham had reportedly said through his campaign that his government would not allow oil drilling in the Bahamas without additional regulations - although he had earlier threatened an outright ban.

Christie’s Progressive Liberal Party is believed to be more supportive of oil exploration and he has previously been a legal consultant to Bahamas Petroleum.

This morning, shares in Bahamas rallied 7.5 percent to 7.4 pence, while Gulfsands climbed 5.5 percent to 104 pence.

However, it was Cove Energy (LON:COV) that topped the leaderboard in the oil and gas sector, jumping 11.5 percent to 249.25 pence after PTT Exploration and Production raised its big for the East African focused firm.

The Thai energy group is now offering 240 pence per share in Cove, valuing the group at £1.22 billion, topping Royal Dutch Shell’s (LON:RDSB) 220 pence per share bid.

This new development in the Cove bidding war came not long after the the Anadarko-operated Golfinho exploration well showed a recoverable resource of 17 to more than 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, which the consortium is looking to develop as a LNG project.

Cove currently holds an 8.5 percent interest in the Ruvuma basin offshore Mozambique, where Cove holds an 8.5 percent stake, which is its main asset.

Away from oil and gas, investors following the retail sector had more news to digest today.

Burberry (LON:BRBY) released its preliminary results a day after sector bellwether Marks & Spencer (LON:MKS) reported its first full year decline in profits in three years, while online grocer Ocado (LON:OCDO) updated investors on its performance.

Burberry said its pre-tax profits soared 26 percent to £376 million in the year to end March as revenues rose 24 percent to £1.86 billion with the Asia Pacific region accounting for 37 percent of total sales.

The fashion house added that it plans to invest £180-200 million this year, looking to increase its retail space by 12-14 percent. According to Burberry, the investment will be “biased to larger format stores in flagship markets, including London, Chicago and Hong Kong”.

“While we remain vigilant about the external environment, we will continue to invest in front-end opportunities within our brand, digital and retail strategies, to drive sustained, profitable growth and enduring customer engagement over the long term,” said chief executive of Burberry Angela Ahrendts.

Meanwhile, Ocado expects to see year on year sales growth of around 13 percent in the second quarter.

The group added that operational performance at the group’s Hatfield customer fulfilment centre (CFC) continues to improve and is now operating at a record level of capacity.

The construction of Ocado’s second CFC at Dordon, Warwickshire, is progressing according to plan, with testing and commissioning due to start this summer and operations are expected to start in the first quarter of 2013.

“Ocado continues to see sales growth increasing as demand for online grocery shopping expands, and our award winning service and increasing range continue to attract new customers,” the company told investors this morning.

“The board is encouraged by the progress of the business so far this year.”

The reports from Burberry and Ocado were on the list of the most read RNS statements of the day along with an update from fuel cell maker Ceres Power Holdings (LON:CWR).

The group reported significant progress in improving core technology power degradation performance and the reliability of its combined heat and power (CHP) products.

The recent results underpin its confidence in meeting the mass market product specification required for launch in 2016, the company told investors.

The reason for the fairly high degradation rates reported in March from tests has now been identified as contamination from the test infrastructure.

The sources of this contamination have been identified and addressed, and degradation of around 1 per cent per 1,000 hours has now been achieved.

Ceres has also made substantial improvements in CHP product reliability, through hardware and software enhancements that allow unimpeded running and increased uptime.

It is charged that the defendants concealed "a severe and pronounced reduction" in forecasts for Facebook's revenue growth, it was reported.

Shares last Friday spiked after the flotation, which had been priced at US$38 a share, valuing the company at US$104 billion, but it quickly gave back the gains made and the stock closed up just 23 cents.

The lawsuit was made in the US District Court in Manhattan.

Friday's IPO saw Zuckerberg, who developed Facebook from his bedroom at Harvard university, become one of the richest people on the planet.

Fellow founders Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin have also become paper-billionares, along with Napster founder and former employee Sean Parker.

In oil and gas, the battle for East African oil and gas assets was reignited today as global giant Shell was gazumped by a rival bidder in its quest to secure Cove Energy(LON:COV).

Thai energy group PTT Exploration and Production has made a £1.22 billion cash offer for the East-Africa focused junior.

Cove is now backing PTT’s 240 pence a share bid, just hours before shareholders decide whether to take Shell up on its 220 pence a share offer.

Cove chief executive John Craven said: “The bid from PTTEP represents significant value for shareholders and confirms the world class nature of Cove's East African assets.”

Cove put itself up for sale at the start of the year and received an initial offer of 195 pence a share from Shell in February.

Having already matched PTT’s offer last month, Shell will now have to do the same again if it is to get its hands on the highly prospective assets.

The Anglo-Dutch firm is looking to bolster its interests in liquefied natural gas (LNG), a specialist sector in which it is already a leading player.

In other M&A news, GlaxoSmithKline (LON:GSK) has amended the terms of its offer for Human Genome Sciences (NASDAQ:HGSI) after the latter launched a poison pill defence last week.

Pharmaceutical giant GSK originally offered US$13 per share for HGS, which it partners with on lupus drug, Benlysta. The autoimmune disease drug is seen as a key motivation behind GSK’s takeover plan.

The American biotech rejected the original US$2.6 billion offer and has since retaliated to GSK’s hostile bid by putting together a rights plan or 'poison pill'.

The defence would allow shareholders the right to buy more shares at a discount, if one investor acquires a certain percentage of the company’s stock, effectively blocking an unwanted bidder.

GSK said today: “Because HGS has adopted a poison pill, GSK has added a condition to its offer requiring HGS to redeem the pill or, alternatively, GSK being satisfied in its reasonable judgment that the pill has been invalidated or is otherwise inapplicable to GSK's acquisition of HGS.”

In effect, GSK is asking HGS shareholders to remove the poison pill defence.

Back to oil and gas, Proactive Investors also covered a broker note on Shell’s fellow supermajor BP (LON:BP.) from Canaccord Genuity, which said the group could see a share price revival if it can make progress on US Macondo-related fines.

The stock has returned to levels seen in the aftermath of the Macondo oil spill. But Canaccord analysts think the recent weakness “leaves valuations discounting very little upturn in BP fortunes”.

The broker has upgraded the company to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ but has reduced its target price by 30 pence to 485 pence to factor in longer-term growth concerns.

The FTSE 100 heavyweight owes billions of dollars in fines and compensation for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, which killed 11 workers and leaked millions of barrels of crude oil into the water.

The company has been forced to sell off assets since to cover the costs.

And Canaccord sees the settlement of the fines and further sales as catalysts for a share price recovery in the future.

While the broker is not convinced about the scope for longer-term growth at BP, it predicts a “strong recovery” over the next couple of years.

The broker said: “We think current sentiment leaves room for good upside in the case of material progress on issues such as a US settlement over fines, or further disposals.”

“BP still has the uncertainty over Macondo, but we think this is an attractive valuation for a European oil stock with limited Eurozone exposure.”

Another article by Proactive was dedicated to Alliance Pharma (LON:APH), which has a “healthy pipeline” of acquisition opportunities, the branded medicines specialist told shareholders today.

The company owns or licenses the rights to more than 50 pharmaceutical products which it sells mostly in the UK and which is has acquired through acquisition.

Turnover during the first four months of 2012 was £14.3 million, which it said was in line with its expectations.

However the figure excludes the cyclical toxicology product contract, scheduled to get underway is the second half of 2012.

Ultimately this will mean the company, which sells branded medicines, is likely to expect a stronger second half.

Alliance’s strategy is to buy up mainly prescribed and well established branded products that need little marketing.

Chairman Michael Gatenby said: "We have a healthy pipeline of acquisition opportunities and remain confident of bringing more transactions to completion in the near future."

Broker Numis said: “In light of its track record of earnings accretion from such deals, and the stock's current modest valuation we reiterate our buy rating on the shares.”

The Swiss broker reckons the stock should appeal to value investors now the share price has fallen 20 per cent in the last couple of months.

The share price has dipped further today to 303.6 pence, well below the broker’s target of 370 pence, which was lowered by 15 pence given the uncertain economic climate.

The broker has however upgraded its rating to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’ due to the “resilient” London market and a recovery in the Asia and Pacific region.

A company which has seen shares drop even more dramatically is HomeServe (LON:HSV).

But the outlook is rather bleaker for the emergency home repairs group.

Shares fell 29 per cent on Tuesday after HomeServe announced it was shrinking its UK operations as a result of an investigation by the Financial Services Authority over allegations of policy mis-selling.

Both Morgan Stanley and Jefferies have upgraded the company with neutral stances but both remain cautious given the persistent risks to the stock.

“We do not see 15% upside to our price target as compelling enough for a fresh money buy, but if we held the shares we would not sell down here,” said Morgan Stanley, which dropped it target price significantly to 185 pence.

Jefferies followed suit, lowering its target to 160 pence from 195 pence.

Amlin (LON:AML) and Catlin (LON:CGL) were named as US banking giant Morgan Stanley’s top picks in a note on the London market insurers this morning.

The broker says both stocks are attractively valued but is less sure about Hiscox (LON:HSX) and Lancashire (LON:LRE).

It does not see many catalysts for the share price at Hiscox but sees positive momentum in the company’s retail business.

The broker remains bullish on the outlook for the sub-sector as trading updates for the start of this year have been “broadly positive”.

Deutsche Bank has cut sports betting website Sportingbet’s (LON:SBT) target price by 10 pence to 39 pence on the back of the Spanish government tax request.

The taxes are estimated to amount to around €17 million.

It believes the market is overreacting to the injunction against the company in Spain however given the lack of impact Europe has on its profits, and maintains its ‘buy’ rating as a result.

Small cap mining companies from across the globe featured in the broker notes today.

With solid results announced today, Azerbaijan-focused gold producer Anglo Asian Mining (LON:AAZ) is certainly one to keep a close eye on, says broker Fairfax.

Analyst John Meyer repeated his ‘buy’ rating, highlighting the increase in earnings and “relatively low” operating costs in the former Soviet state.

However, Meyer adjusted his target price for Anglo Asian to 70 pence from 72 pence previously due to his lower gold price forecast for the current year, which has been reduced to US$1,600 from US$1,800 per ounce.

“The Gedabek gold resource now looks far larger than had been forecast and the mine is sure to extend well beyond its original six year mine life,” he added.

Shares nipped up 0.4 pence, or 1.2 per cent, today to 33.9 pence.

Elsewhere in mining, Brazilian miner Horizonte Minerals (LON:HZM) has signed outline terms for an earn-in deal with Canadian exploration junior Magellan Minerals for its Agua Azul gold property.

Panmure Gordon analyst Alison Turner noted that the property is not part of Horizonte’s core exploration portfolio and said that, whilst small in itself, the deal demonstrates Horizonte’s commitment to extract value for shareholders from every asset in the portfolio.

“We would note that we had previously ascribed no value to Agua Azul so this deal does demonstrate the potential value hidden in the Horizonte portfolio, which, if unlocked, could in aggregate provide a value uplift,” added Turner, who leaves her ‘buy’ stance and 25 pence target price unchanged.

Shares edged up 0.25 pence, or 2.9 per cent, today to 9 pence.

North of the equator, VANE Minerals’ (LON:VML) renegotiation of two outstanding convertible loan notes to limit possible dilution to other shareholders has been described as “impressive” by broker Northland.

“The new loan note will enable the company to continue to utilise the revenue generated from its Mexican gold operations to explore its prospective copper porphyry and uranium projects in the US,” it said.

Shares rose 0.06 pence, or 7 per cent, to 1 pence in trading today.

Broker Numis expects branded medicines specialist Alliance Pharma (LON:APH) to have a stronger second half to the year in line with the launch of its toxicology product.

It added: “We also expect sales of Anbesol [oral pain relief] and Ashtons & Parsons Infant Powders [teething powder] to pick up now that supply issues are "largely resolved".”

The broker retains its ‘buy’ recommendation and has a 37 pence target on the stock, which implies 28 per cent upside to the current price of 29 pence.

The Swiss broker reckons the stock should appeal to value investors now the share price has fallen 20 per cent in the last couple of months.

The share price has dipped further today to 301.9 pence, well below the broker’s target of 370 pence, which was lowered by 15 pence given the uncertain economic climate.

The broker has however upgraded its rating to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’ due to the “resilient” London market and a recovery in the Asia and Pacific region.

A company which has seen shares drop even more dramatically is HomeServe (LON:HSV).

But the outlook is rather bleaker for the emergency home repairs group.

Shares fell 29 per cent on Tuesday after HomeServe announced it was shrinking its UK operations as a result of an investigation by the Financial Services Authority over allegations of policy mis-selling.

Both Morgan Stanley and Jefferies have upgraded the company with neutral stances but both remain cautious given the persistent risks to the stock.

“We do not see 15% upside to our price target as compelling enough for a fresh money buy, but if we held the shares we would not sell down here,” said Morgan Stanley, which dropped it target price significantly to 185 pence.

Jefferies followed suit, lowering its target to 160 pence from 195 pence.

Amlin (LON:AML) and Catlin (LON:CGL) were named as US banking giant Morgan Stanley’s top picks in a note on the London market insurers this morning.

The broker says both stocks are attractively valued but is less sure about Hiscox (LON:HSX) and Lancashire (LON:LRE).

It does not see many catalysts for the share price at Hiscox but sees positive momentum in the company’s retail business.

The broker remains bullish on the outlook for the sub-sector as trading updates for the start of this year have been “broadly positive”.

Deutsche Bank has cut sports betting website Sportingbet’s (LON:SBT) target price by 10 pence to 39 pence on the back of the Spanish government tax request.

The taxes are estimated to amount to around €17 million.

It believes the market is overreacting to the injunction against the company in Spain however given the lack of impact Europe has on its profits, and maintains its ‘buy’ rating as a result.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of JPMorgan employees says their retirement accounts fell in value after news broke about the trading loss, Reuters reports. That’s because the plan holds JPMorgan shares which have dropped 18% since the loss was announced on May 10.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, names the bank, its CEO and chairman Jamie Dimon as well as former CIO Ina Drew, who resigned soon after the loss was revealed, as defendants. According to the suit, the defendants violated the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act which gives plan participants the right to sue for breaches of fiduciary duty.”

Chuck again… OMG… what’s next?

To recap… The two-day calm in the currencies ended overnight as fears of a Greek exit from the euro are really strong after an EU official said that there would be no renegotiating of the bailout terms for Greece. The EU Summit begins today, and should become a real dogfight between the southern countries that want to spend and promote growth, and the northern countries that want to continue the austerity measures. Gold and Oil the “anti-dollars” are getting sold because of the dollar strength…

Currencies today 5/23/12… American Style: A$ .9760, kiwi .75, C$ .9780, euro 1.2660, sterling 1.5730, Swiss $1.0540, … European Style: rand 8.3865, krone 5.9870, SEK 7.1650, forint 238.35, zloty 3.4430, koruna 20.099, RUB 31.53, yen 79.40, sing 1.2770, HKD 7.7660, INR 55.92, China 6.3345, pesos 13.96, BRL 2.09, Dollar Index 81.69, Oil $91, 10-year 1.74%, Silver $27.82, and Gold… $1,559.55

That’s it for today… except… HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Braden Charles Butler! Yes, Braden is 1 year old today! WOW! A big birthday party will be held at the Butler house this Saturday… At last count, I heard about 65 people that want to come and wish Braden Charles Happy Birthday… The Water Polo Banquet was last night, and Alex was given the award for best offensive player on the JV squad… He’ll move up to varsity next year… that should be interesting, as he’ll be playing for his older brother, as son Andrew coaches the varsity… OK… the weather here has been just downright beautiful, let’s hope that lasts through this holiday weekend… and with that, I thank you for reading the Pfennig, and I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday!

Mid-Day: The NASDAQ is DOWN -35.79 (-1.26%) to 2,803.29 while the Dow is also DOWN -165.29 (-1.32%) to 12,337.52.

Mid-Day Market Commentary: Some RegMed stocks have shown a notable move to the … downside in … mid-day … trading on Wednesday after ending the previous session roughly flat. The major averages have slid firmly into negative territory … amid worries that Greece could exit the euro zone and ahead of an informal EU Summit in Brussels. My message to the Greeks … “Let my sector go” … so we can thrive in a non-EU headline!!

The CBOE Volatility Index, <fear gauge> traded … now near 24 … up from 20, today! The weakness on reflects continued concerns about the financial situation in Europe amid a meeting of European leaders in Brussels.  The EU summit is expected to focus on ways to boost the struggling European economy as well as the ongoing uncertainty about Greece following the debt-plagued nation’s failure to form … a garbage collecting society.

Interesting quote from Vanguard’s CEO John Bogle: “Stocks can do what they wish and to some extent the market can do what it wishes. But when you look back at the grand wave of IPOs, the new economy and Internet and information age back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, it’s a fad. It’s in the price of the stock and people are looking for a free ride upward in the new world.”

Truth be told … the old world not, the new normal(s) persist in making its reality felt.

Today’s Gospel:  Many RegMed stocks are DOWN … Mid-day, Wednesday … there are NO leader(s) … few green (ups) … many reds (downs) and … 1 black (flats).

Did you receive the latest update … from Pluristem (PSTI) – 2 patients died … yet, they believe PLX cells will be effective in bone marrow transplantation … tells us … WHY ?? … We keep hearing PSTI is … going to initiate the CLI trial … so “boobie”, when?  And,  another … why … more pre-clinical activities … focus on one for once.  But, it is a card game so we must play all cards and if your going to get a government subsidy to keep the pot big … or to fund trial and R&D … there is nothing wrong in keeping people employeed … call it that and not an investment!

Finally, about, that call back … same old situation … nothing … at least I tried!! When you call CYTX (TB), ASTM (TM or BG) and even NBS (RS), you can guarantee a call within the hour … without fail!

My favorites: 

• Aastrom (ASTM) is down -$0.03 or 1.42%  to -$2.08 after a depreciating week  with a retreating and tightening …  mid-day range $2.06 – $2.12 with … small, volume of 175K shares;

• Cytori (CYTX) is down … +$0.01 or -0.48% to $2.09 in a retreating and tightening trading range of $2.04 – $2.14 with …  small trading of 124k;

• OSIR …. Drops … more as traders take their profits … OSIR declined -$0.39 or -6.55 % to $5.56.

Minimal upward moves: by the hairs … StemCells (STEM),NeoStem (Amex: NBS),Neuralstem (Amex: CUR).

Minimal downward moves: Advanced Cell Technology (OTC BB: ACTC), BioLife Solutions (OTC BB: BLFS), BioTime (Amex: BTX), Brainstorm (OTC BB: BCLI), Cryo-Cell (OTC BB: CCEL), Dendreon (DNDN), Geron (GERN), Opexa (OPXA), Pluristem (PSTI), ReNeuron (RENE.L), Tengion (TNGN), Athersys (ATHX), BioMimetic (BMTI), Cytomedix (OTC BB: CMXI), Fibrocell (OTC BB: FCSC), ImmunoCellular (OTC BB: IMUC),International Stem Cell (OTC BB: ISCO), Thermogenesis (KOOL) and Verastem (VSTM) .

EconRecon is now become … Econorama … so we can identify the drama within the dismal science announcements that affect and effect our universe’s moves.

What’s new in the regenerative medicine/stem cell market … see: www.scimitarequity.com/blog …

Synthetic Biologics (SYN) is a biotechnology company focused on the development of synthetic DNA-based therapeutics and innovative disease-modifying medicines for serious illnesses. The company’s lead candidate, Trimesta, a synthetic DNA-based therapy for pulmonary arterial hypertension,  is doing particularly interesting things in Alzheimer’s Disease and related illnesses. Below, OneMedRadio interviews CEO Jeff Riley.

Matthew Margolis:    Greetings from OneMedRadio, I’m Matt Margolis. Today, we’re joined by Jeff Riley, CEO of Synthetic Biologics, an East Coast-based biotechnology company developing DNA-based therapeutics and disease-modifying medicines for serious illnesses. Synthetic Biologics trades on the AMEX under the symbol SYN. Mr. Riley, thank you for joining us.

Jeff Riley:    Hey Matt, thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here.

MM:     So let’s start with the discussion of your R&D. So what’s your lead candidate? How does it work?

JR:     Matt, I’d love to do so. We basically have three products that are at the clinical stage of development. The one that we’re no longer heavily involved in is for fibromyalgia. It’s called Flupertine, and that was partnered in 2010 with Meda, a Swedish drug company.

So we focus on our other two products that are in-house and that we’re moving forward. One is for multiple sclerosis that is called Trimesta. We just completed the 164-patient relapse and remitting trial enrollment of patients. It’s being run out of UCLA by Rhonda Voskuhl, and we expect to have information data from that Phase II trial some time in early 2014. We are also in the process of enrolling another 60 patients for cognitive dysfunction, also in multiple sclerosis in women, and that trial should begin shortly as well.

Our other product, which is very exciting is the zinc acetate formulation and it’s specifically for Lou Gehrig’s disease or ALS. The Phase I trial of that is going to begin in about 2 weeks, and we’ll roll into a Phase II/III trial by third quarter of this year. We’re hoping for data from that Phase II/III trial in first quarter or potentially even second quarter of next year, 2013. Again, there’s really no therapies for ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease at this point in time, so we feel very, very good that if this product does show efficacy, which has pre-clinically looked like it’s going to do very well, we’ll have something that can help patients substantially. So they’re already in the pipeline.

MM:     And what specifically do you think makes your unique formulation for ALS opportunistic?

JR:  I don’t know if it’s opportunistic. I think there’s a fair amount of data that’s been out in the public demand with respect to zinc and how zinc functions as it relates to copper, especially in central nervous system disorders, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gherig’s disease. So the mechanism of action is essentially trying to balance the amount of copper in an individual’s brain when they get an amount of zinc that actually pulls copper. It is complementary to some extent pulling copper from the brain. There’s a bit of a balancing act there, but the theory in the science we had is very solid so we were following on years and years of research to see whether or not we can show that this works in patients.

MM:   So in your opinion, why is there resurgence in gene medicine?

JR:  We call it Gene Medicine 2.0, and in November of last year, we decided to change directions a little bit in the company, and going forward, focus heavier on biologics, which is why we renamed the company Synthetic Biologics. Gene Medicine is, I think, coming into its own similar to monoclonal antibodies and other therapies over the years, in particular, biologics. It really does take 15 to 20 years of hard academic and rigorous research to get a set-up technology or a set of products to a point where you could do the translational work, put those in the humans, and see exactly what’s going to happen.

About 10, 12 years ago, Genome Therapy 1.0 was very famous. Several companies raised billions of dollars. The result was that it was not ready for primetime. It was a little bit premature, and basically, gene therapy dropped off the face of the planet.

Big pharmacies decided to abandon those areas, not all of them, but most of them, and [were] de-prioritized within the discovery functions in these companies.

However, the last 10 years, there’s been a lot of progress made, and I think you’re going to see a resurgence because a lot of the issues from delivery to immunogenicity have been overcome by a lot of great academic research, and we felt that the time is right, and the inflection point was right for attempting it, in particular, small company like us to jump into that world, build a theme around that, and begin to pull these products into the clinic.

MM:     So I wonder if we could circle back to your company re-branding, your recent changes. Maybe you can introduce us to the recent management changes.

JR:     You bet. So I was chairman of the – I became chairman of the company in November, and I took the CEO role in February of this year.

We also hired John Monahan as our chief science officer. John is one of the foremost experts in the gene therapy area. He was also the founder and CEO of the company called Avigen, which was one of the bigger gene therapy companies 10, 12 years ago. It reached the market cap of $2 billion and then crashed back to earth at a later date. It was acquired by somebody else, a fantastic individual, very, very, very knowledgeable about the gene therapy space.

We’ve also hired recently a gentleman named Evan Valentine. Evan was the Chief Financial Officer for Clinical Data, where he was for 5 years, and it successfully sold that company last year in 2011 for $1.3 billion. That was an R.J. Kirk company, and we’ll get to that shortly I think when we talk a little bit about our partner in strategies with privately-held company Intrexon.

We’ve also hired Michael Calico who used to be at Novartis. He ran Novartis’ gene ocular programs. And we continue to fill out the rest of the team with press releases over the next few weeks. You’ll see filling in with the Chief Clinical Officer as well as, you know, VP of Regulatory goals in addition to what we currently have. So you’ll see a team that’s very focused on the products that we have today from the clinical development perspective, but more importantly, look into the future at biologics and more specifically gene medicine. This team will be one of the best teams out there as far as knowing how to take a product from I&D on through.

MM:   And you were eager to discuss your collaboration with Intrexon Corporation. In late March 2012, you announced your Q1 earnings and one major highlight was the execution of this collaboration that occurred in Q4 of 2011. So I was wondering if you could go into a little detail about this company milestone.

JR:   You bet. Alot of folks in the industry, in particular, on the banking side, know a name Randall J. Kirk, also known as R.J. Kirk. This gentleman was very prolific in the biotech and pharma industries with respect to M&A and building companies. His mantra tends to be, you know, he’s going to buy into a company, he’s going to build the company, he doesn’t sell his stock, and he gets the company to a point where there’s a value inflection point, and an M&A transaction occurs. He was involved with General Injectables, Ziospharma, King Pharmaceuticals, New River was his company. And most recently, no the public side, his company was Clinical Data. I’ve hired his ex-Chief Financial Officer recently for our company.

And during that time period, he’s also started and is now very focused on a company called Intrexon, which is a privately-held company with roughly 300 employees in it. It is focused entirely on DNA therapies, the platforms within DNA therapies as well so based treatments, stem cells, you name it. If it’s biologic, he’s been going out looking at platforms and acquiring those who’re building a platform-based company around those technologies. So we were very pleased back in November, late November of last year when we were able to get a deal done with his company, which was announced. It was specifically around one indication to begin with. We hope to expand that collaboration over the next couple of months, but the initial collaboration is around pulmonary arterial hypertension, and we’re using the real switch technology in addition to our expertise.

The two teams are working together to move this further pre-clinical studies and hopefully into the clinic.

MM:      So maybe you can go into some detail about pulmonary arterial hypertension, and specifically, what the market opportunity is there.

JR:    PAH is a nasty disease. Basically, the thickening of the arteries that lead, from the lung to the heart and back. It’s a deadly disease, life span 3 to 5 years after contracting this disease. There are some pretty good therapies out there today, everything from Viagra, which is used to help expand that area in a pinch to some of the prostacyclins, and there’s a variety of companies playing in this area. One of the downsides is that most of the therapies including prostacyclin, there is a dose limiting issue, in that you can’t give a patient too much of that without an adverse reaction.

So with gene therapy, the goal is to try and get the DNA directly into the cells that are at the location of the disease stage itself, so in the pulmonary arteries, where we will then be able to activate those genes to produce the proteins, to produce the prostacyclin, and the theory is that we will be able to get a much higher amount of the product locally at the place where it needs to be with a much lower systemic side effect profile, which will obviously benefit patients greatly. They don’t have as much side effects, but they have the drug that they need to have at that location, so hopefully eliminate the disease state.

MM:  Now I want to circle back to your in-house pipeline. So can you go into some detail about your approval calendar for Trimesta and your ALS formulation?

JR:   We briefly touched on it earlier for the Trimesta for the MS drug. We’re looking at getting Phase II data early next year or early – I’m sorry – early in 2014. Thereafter, we’ll have to look at what the trial date is. It is a pretty big trial, 165 patients, 164 patients. We’ll have to get together with the FDA and see what we need to do for registration trial. After that, the endpoints are such – keep in mind, there are two MS trials we’re running; one for cognition and one for relapse-remitting MS, and we don’t have a clear picture on if we can accelerate the process after that trial or not. So I can’t give you a clear definitive answer on that per MS specifically.

For Lou Gehrig’s disease and the zinc formulation, that – We know pretty closely what we need to do with that. The Phase I will begin shortly. We’ll go into a Phase II/III later this year, and probably by this time next year, 2013, we will have results from the Phase II/III trial. Again, we’ll have to go to the FDA and talk to them to find out exactly what we needed to do, whether that data is sufficient to be registration file or whether we need to do another Phase III. So again, that’s a much shorter timeline than Trimesta, but again, the market is not as big for Lou Gehrig’s disease as it is for multiple sclerosis.

MM:  And lastly, what opportunities do you see for Synthetic Biologics going forward and what are your key strategies to build shareholder value?

JR:    Going forward, we’re looking at obviously doing the basic blocking and tackling on our existing programs and moving those forward as aggressively as we can. In addition to that, we are very active on the business development front. We are looking at a variety of programs in the gene therapy and cell-base therapy biologics areas, and we will be pulling programs into the company over the next 4 to 6 months. In addition to that, we will probably expand our relationship with Intrexon. Those are in discussions now, and you know, we hope to have a very robust pipeline from discovery stage, pre-clinical stage programs, all the way up to Phase III within the next year or so.

MM:   That was a company snapshot with Jeff Riley of Synthetic Biologics, trading on the AMEX under the symbol S-Y-N. This is Matt Margolis of OneMedRadio signing off.

MEDIA ENCLOSURE: http://www.onemedplace.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/GENE-THERAPY.jpg

The move boosted the US dollar’s safe haven appeal, while reducing demand for gold, which is seen as an alternative investment to the greenback.

The American currency also benefitted from caution ahead of tomorrow’s summit of euro zone leaders.

It is expected that common euro area bonds will be among the key issues discussed at the meeting in Brussels. France is strongly in favour of euro zone bonds, which are, however, opposed by the monetary union’s largest economy Germany.

Gold traded at US$1,588/oz, down US$4 from Monday’s close. Platinum moved in the same direction as gold, falling US$5 to US$1,459/oz, while silver added 28 to reach US$28.75/oz.

Today’s top risers in the sector were:

Orosur Mining (LON:OMI), up 15.5 percent at 40.95 pence at midday

Bezant Resources (LON:BZT), up 10 percent at 24.19 pence

Centamin (LON:CEY), up 7 percent at 69.47 pence

Fresnillo (LON:FRES), up 5.5 percent at 1,394 pence

Aureus Mining (LON:AUE), up 4 percent at 56.25 pence

The top fallers were:

Greatland Gold (LON:GGP), down 11 percent at 1.02 pence at midday

Vatukoula Gold Mines (LON:VGM), down 9 percent at 42.25 pence

Oxus Gold (LON:OXS), down 5.5 percent at 2.48 pence

A Reuters poll projected this week’s US oil inventories figures to show a buildup of one million barrels. Last week, the Department of Energy said crude stocks rose 2.1 million barrels to 381.6 million barrels, the highest level in more than two decades.

While US futures fell, Brent crude advanced, driven by optimism ahead of tomorrow’s EU summit and reports that China has decide to fast-track the approval of infrastructure projects to support economic growth.

European leaders will meet in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss the debt crisis with traders hoping for an agreement on measures to support growth.

French President Francois Hollande has proposed issuing common euro area bonds to resolve the fiscal crisis, however, this suggestion has been rejected by the euro zone’s largest contributor of financial aid Germany.

 Oil prices received more support from another round of sanctions against Iran imposed by the US Congress on Monday.

The Middle Eastern country, which is accused of illegally developing a nuclear weapon, has been hit by a series of sanctions by the US and Europe, resulting in a decline in its oil exports.

US light, sweet crude for July delivery, currently the most actively traded contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), declined 25 cents to US$92.61/barrel in morning trade in New York.

July Brent crude climbed 24 cents to US$109.05/barrel on the ICE Exchange this afternoon.

Today’s top risers in the oil and gas sector were:

Gold Oil (LON:GOO), up 32.5 percent at 5.41 pence at midday

Xcite Energy (LON:XEL), up 18 percent at 103.9 pence

Lochard Energy (LON:LHD), up 12 percent at 9.4 pence

Trap Oil (LON:TRAP), up 10 percent at 27 pence

Serica Energy (LON:SQZ), up 7 percent at 24.85 pence

The top fallers were:

Frontera Resources (LON:FRR), down 12.5 percent at 0.74 pence at midday

Gasol (LON:GAS), down 7 percent at 0.51 pence

Egdon Resources (LON:EDR), down 6 percent at 7.27 pence

Matra Petroleum (LON:MTA), down 5.5 percent at 2.5 pence

Investors noted that the group said earlier this month that it was in talks with potential suitors and had set a deadline for final bids, adding that it expected to provide an update within four weeks.

Speculation that an update on takeover talks is due imminently coupled with expectations of first oil from the Athena field drove shares up from below 150 pence to 173 pence yesterday, putting it among the top risers in the oil and gas sector.

Today’s top risers included Bellzone Mining (LON:BZM), whose shares jumped 26 percent to 23 pence in morning trade after the mining group secured regulatory approval to start commercial production from the Forécariah operations.

The company plans to initially mine and export two million tonnes of high grade material identified by internal resource modelling during the first year of operations, aiming to reach the design capacity of four million tonnes per annum by the end of the year.

Post the initial two million tonnes, the low grade oxide will be upgraded to produce a 58 percent Fe product.

Bellzone added that it is currently in talks over off-take agreements.

“The ability to bring a greenfield asset into production, build a trans-shipping port and haulage road in under 15 months is a significant achievement,” said chief executive of Bellzone Nik Zuks.

“The JV will continue to grow the resources and its production capacity as an operating entity.

“Bellzone now has a significant interest in an operating entity combined with a globally significant resource under development at our flagship Kalia iron mine.”

In contrast, African Copper (LON:ACU) dipped 12 percent to 1.88 pence after it was revealed that an equipment failure has forced it to halt copper production at the Mowana mine in Botswana.

The failure, which occurred over the weekend, has rendered the facility inoperable until a new pinion shaft is installed.

The mill is expected to be out of operation for at least 12 days, while other mining activities including drilling, load and haul, and ore transportation are expected to continue to plan.

The crushing sections at the Mowana mine facility will continue running with the aim of filling both the coarse and fine product stockpiles with the higher grade Thakadu ore, with a view to building the ore stockpiles in front of the mill.

This will allow the plant to run at a higher throughput once the mill is repaired, added African Copper.

The update from African Copper was on the list of the most read RNS statements along with today’s announcements from Baltic Oil Terminals (LON:BTC) and Max Petroleum (LON:MXP), which has spudded another well in Kazakhstan.

Max has started drilling the ASK-J2 development well in the Asanketken field in Block E, which will be drilled to a depth of 1,400 metres, targeting Jurassic reservoirs.

A week ago, the previous well on Asanketken, ASK-J1, reached its total depth with logs indicating 36 metres of net oil pay with excellent reservoir quality.

The ASK-J1 well will be completed and placed on test production.

Meanwhile, BTC has raised£950,000 via a share placing to fund its fuel oil optimisation project at the refined product terminal in  Aabenraa, Denmark.

The project, which has a total budget to €1.2 million, is expected to be completed by the end of the year, while ensuring that present capacity remains unaffected by the modifications and allowing continuity of operations for the rest of 2012.

The shares were placed at a price of 13 pence per share, a 5.5 percent discount to Monday’s closing price.

The group also told investors that its 2011 results are expected to be in line with expectations.

HomeServe (LON:HSV) and Yell Group (LON:YELL) also garnered interest today as shares in both fell sharply after they released full year results.

Yell posted a massive full year loss of £1.4 billion on revenues of £1.6 billion, down 14 percent from the previous year, for the year to end March.

 In addition, the phone directories publisher, which last year launched a four year restructuring programme, told investors that its transition into a predominantly digital business has not progressed as fast as it would like.

HomeServe posted much better full year financial results, which showed that revenues in the year to March surged 14 percent to £535 million and pre-tax profits came in at £138 million, up 2 percent from the previous year as the number of customers increased 14 percent to 2.2 million.

However, shares fell 23 percent to 175.7 pence after confirming it was the subject of a probe by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) over possible mis-selling.

The FSA will investigate “certain historic issues” with the probe expected to take a number of months to complete.

Late last year, the home emergency services provider HomeServe suspended its UK telesales and marketing activities following a review by auditor Deloitte.

In today’s statement, the company said it had identified a number of potential failings in its sales and marketing and complaints handing activities.

“We took swift and comprehensive action to address the issues that we identified in the UK and are totally committed to restoring our customer focus,” said chief executive of HomeServe Richard Harpin.

“We are strengthening our management teams, retraining staff and continuing to make significant investments in customer service.”

The group also noted that it carried out more than 1.6 million repair for customers last year, show it said showed that its products and services “continue to meet real customer needs both in the UK and our International markets”.

Entrepreneur Algy Cluff told Proactive Investors that he hoped that by the end of July his new venture would have snapped up the first of its investment deals, on its journey towards building a global resource player.

And he said he hoped these deals would be, "within a relatively short space of time", cash positive.

"One of them is likely to be in the North Sea, and one in Africa," Cluff told Proactive Investors.

"What I'm looking for is actual, or imminent cash flow," he said.

The company, which is focused on oil and gas and mining assets, was launched in the City this morning having raised £3.75 million before expenses in what Cluff said was a "heavily oversubscribed" placing.

It issued 75 million new shares at 5 pence per share and issued 35 million warrants.

Cluff explained, however, that cash was not key to the firm's onward development, as some of the firm's proposed transactions will be for shares.

Cluff Natural Resources plans to make use of the veteran oil man’s extensive experience and contacts he has made over the last 40 years to source opportunities.

It believes the UK North Sea still draws major investment interest and that Africa is positioned to become the second fastest growing region in the world.

Getting busy again in the North Sea sees Cluff going back from whence he came (he founded Cluff Oil in the 1970s) - something he is relishing, though he noted things there "have changed very much".

"Having been a fairly hostile environment to the small companies, it's now becoming quite a benign environment," he told Proactive.

"Twenty- to thirty years years ago, it was frowned on for small companies to farm out their obligations - now they are positively encouraged to do that," he said.

Proactive also drew investors’ attention to potash group Elemental Minerals (ASX:ELM, TSX:ELM), which has taken a very restrained approach to marketing itself since it started developing the project about three years ago.

And this has been a deliberate strategy, according to Iain Macpherson, chief executive of the group, which owns the Sintoukola potash property in the Republic of Congo.  

“The project is good, so we have taken the decision to get our heads down and let it speak for itself,” said Macpherson.

The story was introduced to a new audience au fait with the dynamics of the potash market recently via its listing in Canada. 

The TSX IPO raised about C$61 million, which will fund the group through its bankable feasibility study scheduled for next April.

In terms of outside interest in the project, the preliminary feasibility, due for publication in August or September this year, may prove pivotal.

“The PFS is not a traditional go, no-go decision point for the company,” said Macpherson. 

“It is more a marketing process for future project finance requirements or capital requirements.”

So far, exploration work has focused on the Kola deposit, which represents 60 square kilometres of a possible 1,400.

Even so it has delivered a 43-101 sylvinite resource of 413 million tonnes in the measured and indicated catagories with a further 261 million tonnes in the inferred mineral resource category. 

This is the key component of a potash resource of just over 959 million tonnes in the measured and indicated categories, with a further 513 million tonnes in the inferred mineral resource category.

“We are exclusively focussed on the highly sought after sylvinite resource,” said Macpherson.

“And despite having examined only a very small section of the Sintoukola property we have already confirmed sufficient sylvinite tonnage to support a long life production of two million tonnes a year of finished potash, which is a vital ingredient in fertiliser.” 

Two other reports from Proactive covered today’s news from energy group Wasabi Energy (LON:WAS), which has received approval to buy into an advanced geothermal power generator in Turkey from the current owner, and coal miner Ncondezi Coal (LON:NCCL).

Ncondezi this morning unveiled a major overhaul of its board, including the appointment of a new chairman and chief executive, ahead of the development of its coal project in Mozambique’s Tete Province.

Michael Haworth, a former managing director of mining and metals corporate finance at the blue-chip American bank JP Morgan, becomes chairman, replacing Richard Stuart, who will remain on the board as a non-executive director.

So too will CEO Graham Mascall, who will be replaced in that role by the company’s chief operating officer, Nigel Walls. 

Paul Venter, who has 39 years mining experience across Africa, Mongolia, China and Russia, has been drafted in as COO.

In his role TSX-listed Prophecy Coal Corp Venter oversaw the successful commissioning of the Ulaan Ovoo coal mine in Mongolia just six months after acquiring the asset.

Haworth said: "I would like to thank Richard and Graham for successfully guiding and transforming Ncondezi over the past two years. 

“I am pleased that they have agreed to remain on the board so we will continue to have access to their expertise and advice."

Meanwhile, Wasabi’s Turkish subsidiary Imparator Enerji signed an option to take a 50 per cent stake in the Tuzla Geothermal Power Project (TGPP) in April subject to partner and regulatory approval.

TGPP owner and operator Enda Enerji has now given its go-ahead, though the exercise of the option remains subject to the project lender's consent as well as regulatory approvals, Wasabi said.

The total consideration for the option is US$11.75 million (including a US$5 million loan note).

The project includes an operating 7.5 MWe geothermal power plant in Canakkale Turkey, with opportunities to expand further.

Historical studies indicate geothermal power generation potential of up to 80 MWe said Wasabi, which has started work on a pre-feasibility study for the development of a first stage 14 - 17.5 MWe build-out.

Wasabi will develop the project with Enda, which is an experienced power plant developer and operator in Turkey. 

The TGPP covers an area of approximately 11sq km of a very shallow and relatively high temperature geothermal zone in North Western Turkey and hosts a recently installed and currently operating 7.5 MWe power plant. 

The Tuzlageothermal field has also been extensively studied and drilling has confirmed the TGPP as a major regional geothermal resource.

Wasabi added the proposed 14 - 17.5 MWe first-stage build-out at the TGPP may utilise its Kalina Cycle technology, which has the potential to increase power generation at the project by 20 per cent.

Wasabi said the option and development work would be funded through asset sales and other capital raising initiatives.

In other news, retail giant Marks and Spencer's (LON:MKS) profits fell for the first time in three years while it cut its sales growth targets because of the uncertain economic outlook.

The clothing and luxury food group now expects to increase revenue by £1.1 billion to £1.7 billion next year, after originally targeting growth of £2.5 billion.

Chief executive Marc Bolland said: “While conditions in the UK are predicted to be more difficult than originally forecast, we are on track to deliver both international and multi-channel targets.”

Pre-tax profits for the year to the end of March fell 16 per cent to £658 million compared to last year’s figure of £781 million.

Total group sales were up two per cent at £9.9 billion, while in the UK the company reported an increase in like-for-like sales of 0.3 per cent, driven by a strong performance in food.

With the “increasingly challenging consumer backdrop” in mind M&S launched its ‘value’ food range, Simply M&S this month.

The company said it also had a record year in kidswear while womenswear had a more mixed performance partly due to merchandising issues in the third quarter.

Like-for-like sales of general merchandise suffered, down 1.8 per cent on the previous year.

The Swiss firm views the sale of its 19.6 per cent stake in BlackRock as a sign of shareholder focus.

“In our view, Barclays did not want to sell this stake, viewing it as exposure to a capital-light, high-growth business,” the broker said.

But it says that by removing what could have been a large drag on capital in the future, “Barclays is bringing forward the day when it can return more meaningful amounts of capital to shareholders”.

The broker is unchanged with a ‘buy’ stance and 215 pence price target.

Shares nipped up to 182 pence today.

Supermarket heavyweight Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) is another company looking to put a smile on shareholders’ faces by reducing capital expenditure.

The company’s guidance for capex in 2013 of £1 billion is £200 million less than last year which broker ING says will be “beneficial” to shareholders.

The broker has upgraded the grocery store to ‘hold’ from ‘sell’ with an increased target price of 313 pence from 268 pence as a result of what it calls an improvement in “capital discipline”.

Merchant Securities is urging investors to ‘sell’ shares in Sainsbury’s rival Morrisons (LON:MRW).

The broker expects the shares to fall further still and says the introduction of yet another petrol voucher campaign is a sign of its desperation.

“We fear that Morrisons is under extreme pressure to get customers used to shopping there in the run up to the crucial summer ahead: its LFL is still in negative territory we’d wager,” the broker said.

Pizza delivery favourite Domino’s (LON:DOM) is turning up the heat in the kitchen as it benefits from the recent run of wet weather, says Liberum Capital.

The broker has raised the stock to ‘hold’ from ‘sell’ and also its target price, which now stands at 414 pence, up 20 pence.

Sporting events including Euro 2012 and the Olympics should also help boost sales this summer according to the broker, which also feels that much of the value is already priced in.

“While upgrades and further share buybacks may lead to short-term share price appreciation, the valuation looks full and risks remain,” Liberum said.

Shares climbed a tad today to 457 pence.

HSBC reckons the first quarter was the weakest for miner African Barrick Gold (LON:ABG) and it should improve as the year progresses.

The reduction in the gold price forecasts means the broker chops 100 pence off its price target, leaving it at 740 pence against the current price of 346 pence.

In small caps, Westhouse Securities reckons South-East Asia-focused gold miner Archipelago Resources (LON:AR) should see growth going forward thanks to its potential to generate significant cash flow over the next few years.

The broker sees “further potential upside over the next few years” for the stock as long as it can maintain consistent production levels at its guided cash cost level.

“With a quality cash-generating asset at its core, Archipelago has the opportunity to grow by acquiring near production assets across the region,” said Westhouse analyst Rob Broke.

The broker initiates coverage on the stock with a ‘buy’ recommendation and price target of 75 pence, 32 per cent above the current market price of 57 pence, up 0.5 pence today.

Drug discovery and development company e-Therapeutics (LON:ETX) is able to pursue development of its pipeline assets thanks to the successful recapitalisation last year, says Panmure Gordon.

The broker’s 76 pence price target is a result of its conservative assumptions on Clostriban use in the US and Europe, in addition to Dexanabinol in Europe alone.

The share price stood at 39 at the close of play.

Broker Daniel Stewart has its sights fixed firmly on mining and recycling company ZincOx Resources (LON:ZOX).

It reckons the main catalyst for the share price will be the development of its second Korean recycling plant, which stands to double capacity and “significantly boost the revenue generation possibilities for the facility”.

The broker adds that lessons learnt from the development of the first plant will come in extremely handy this time round.

It is a ‘buyer’ with a 139 pence target price, more than double the current market price of 68.5 pence, up 2 pence today.

The Swiss firm views the sale of its 19.6 per cent stake in BlackRock as a sign of shareholder focus.

“In our view, Barclays did not want to sell this stake, viewing it as exposure to a capital-light, high-growth business,” the broker said.

But it says that by removing what could have been a large drag on capital in the future, “Barclays is bringing forward the day when it can return more meaningful amounts of capital to shareholders”.

The broker is unchanged with a ‘buy’ stance and 215 pence price target.

Shares nipped up to 182 pence today.

Supermarket heavyweight Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) is another company looking to put a smile on shareholders’ faces by reducing capital expenditure.

The company’s guidance for capex in 2013 of £1 billion is £200 million less than last year which broker ING says will be “beneficial” to shareholders.

The broker has upgraded the grocery store to ‘hold’ from ‘sell’ with an increased target price of 313 pence from 268 pence as a result of what it calls an improvement in “capital discipline”.

Merchant Securities is urging investors to ‘sell’ shares in Sainsbury’s rival Morrisons (LON:MRW).

The broker expects the shares to fall further still and says the introduction of yet another petrol voucher campaign is a sign of its desperation.

“We fear that Morrisons is under extreme pressure to get customers used to shopping there in the run up to the crucial summer ahead: its LFL is still in negative territory we’d wager,” the broker said.

Pizza delivery favourite Domino’s (LON:DOM) is turning up the heat in the kitchen as it benefits from the recent run of wet weather, says Liberum Capital.

The broker has raised the stock to ‘hold’ from ‘sell’ and also its target price, which now stands at 414 pence, up 20 pence.

Sporting events including Euro 2012 and the Olympics should also help boost sales this summer according to the broker, which also feels that much of the value is already priced in.

“While upgrades and further share buybacks may lead to short-term share price appreciation, the valuation looks full and risks remain,” Liberum said.

Shares climbed a tad today to 457 pence.

HSBC reckons the first quarter was the weakest for miner African Barrick Gold (LON:ABG) and it should improve as the year progresses.

The reduction in the gold price forecasts means the broker chops 100 pence off its price target, leaving it at 740 pence against the current price of 346 pence.

Maybe the currency traders can also find their ways back on to the right course… But I doubt it… I told quite a few people last week that I truly believe that this dollar strength that we’re seeing could last for most of the summer… But you know what happens at the end of summer don’t you? Ahhh grasshopper… With the way we’re spending money that we don’t have, the U.S. Gov’t will be bumping up against the debt ceiling by the end of summer… And with this being an election year, don’t you think that the raising the debt ceiling negotiations are going to get even uglier than last year? I do… and if you recall last year… the dollar was teetering on the cliff during those negotiations…

For now… the dollar still holds the mighty hammer… Of course, I also told quite a few people last year, that while the Aussie dollar (A$) has fallen from the lofty levels above $1.00, it’s still strong… Yes, that’s right, the A$ is still strong compared to where it was 10 years ago! 55-cents… do you recall that?

Anyway… Last week I sent Chris a note to include in the Pfennig that talked about the A$ falling through oversold levels on the RSI charts… and how it had done that 4 times since 2010, and each time previously, the A$ bounced higher… Well… now there’s some more data that leads us to that same conclusion…

The IMM positioning last week, showed A$ longs at their lowest level since the crisis. The last two times that the A$ saw positioning like this (oversold) in July 2010, and September 2011, the A$ experienced pretty significant moves higher in a relatively short period of time.

Now, after I’ve said all that… The A$ is down about 1/2-cent this morning!

When I came in this morning… the currencies were holding their own, but have slipped while I was preparing to write the letter… And Gold is off $16 this morning… So, I’ve got to find out what happened while I was preparing to write… Inquiring Minds Want To Know!

Well, being late to the party doesn’t seem to mind the ratings agencies, and Fitch is the latest to be late to the party in Japan… Fitch downgraded Japan’s credit rating and placed the country on negative outlook… Really? So, what you’re saying, is that you believe Japan has a problem? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I can’t stop laughing! Japan has had a problem for over two decades! But, here’s my serious thought on this… The yen might have weakened by 1/2% on the announcement, but I don’t think the selling of the yen has any legs, and it will stop soon enough… There’s just too much going on in the world right now, and as perverse as it might seem, Japanese yen is a safe haven…

Yesterday, I told you about how Chinese Premier, Wen, announced that China’s economy would receive stimulus… This news helped the Emerging Markets get their heads above water yesterday, along with the fact that Oil gained back a buck on the day, which really helped the Russian ruble gain back some lost ground.

The Chinese announcement also helped the Aussie and kiwi dollars… I think though, that today is going to be a tough row to hoe for the currencies, as the European Union Summit begins tomorrow, and everyone believes that there is going to be a showdown (like the great song by ELO) between Germany and France… and this has got the markets scared right now, which is leading to the selling I’m seeing this morning.

France’s new socialist leader, wants to promote growth with spending… Germany had just about gotten every EU member to sign on to the “austerity is the best program” until France threw a spanner in the works by electing Hollande… And now we’re going to have to be witness to all this drama… But, as I’ve said before, history tells us that eventually, the German leaders can persuade the French leaders to see things the German way… But Hollande has to grandstand now, as he was just elected… although, in my opinion, it’s better to let your constituents down early in your term, so they have time to forget that you dumped on them! HA!

Yesterday, I told you about how I felt regarding Norway and Sweden, getting tarred with the same brush as the euro, and that one day traders would get it through their thick skulls that Norway & Sweden are not Greece! Well, Norway tried to pound that thought in traders’ heads this morning by printing a stronger than expected GDP for the 1st QTR… 1.1% 1st QTR growth is very good for Norway, given how the rest of the world has slowed… oh, by the way the consensus forecast was .9%...

I guess the Brazilian Gov’t and Central Bank wins… The set out two years ago to weaken the real, and after multiple rate cuts, taxes, and intervention, they have finally gotten what they wanted… a weak real… I told you about a month ago that it appeared to me that the traders had left town, and didn’t want to play this game with the Brazilian Central Bank any longer… That took away the support for the real, and the free fall has been quick… This is exactly why I always talked about only buying real with the speculative money that you allocate in your investment portfolio… Crazy wild swings… and now this…
The unintended consequences… they are everywhere and in everything we do… Brazil’s leaders are going to soon find (Yes’ song Soon, just started playing!) that the unintended consequences of their bashing the real into a weakling that gets sand kicked in its face, is soaring inflation… and when the tourists begin to arrive for the World Cup and then the Olympics… Oh my!

Speaking of the Olympics… going back to the 90’s… We have always seen the host country get a bump in the currency as the Olympics draw near and during them… Spain, was the first we tracked, and so on.. So, keeping that in mind, could there be a bump in store for the British pound sterling? That’s going to be a tough row to hoe, given all this dollar strength… but, it will at least be interesting to watch, eh?

Yesterday, I made fun of the G-8 meeting and their silly attempts to make people think they actually accomplished something… I saw that Russian leader Putin, said that the meeting wasn’t worth coming to… Did you know that there was only one truly trained economist among the G-8 leaders? Mario Monti of Italy… Now that alone should tell you something about the meeting… The leaders were all throwing in uneducated ideas of what would work… Oh, boy, sign me up for the next meeting, eh?

I was asked by quite a few people last week about the Swiss franc… you know, the franc is still hovering just above the 1.20 floor that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) put on the currency’s cross to the euro last September, it’s currently at 1.2011… The overtures from the SNB continue to ring out a song about how they want that cross’s level to go to 1.35 or 1.40… That would knock the stuffing out of the franc, folks… And with the euro getting weaker by the day, the SNB’s resolve will be tested soon enough…

I had a chance to talk briefly with James Rickards, author of Currency Wars, while in South Florida a couple of weeks ago… Mr. Rickards is convinced that all countries are in a war to reduce the value of their currency below their neighbor’s or trading partner’s currency…

I told him I hoped that wasn’t true, but at this point, how can you argue with him? But here’s what I took from the conversation and the book… That the U.S. dollar is going to lead the currencies down, which means the dollar will always be weaker than the other currencies… Maybe that’s taking a simplistic view of the whole situation, but I’m just a simple kind of man, something you love and understand… (a little Lynyrd Skynyrd for you!)

Then There Was This… I had a couple of readers send me this story, so it obviously is TTWT worthy! Did you know that the U.S. allows China to bid directly in U.S. debt auctions without going through Wall Street Banks? Yes… it’s true! And China has the only central bank that’s allowed to do this… Reuters broke the story on this… I say… good for both parties! And I would ask why are the other Central Banks of the world not allowed to do this? Why should Wall Street Primary Dealers get to make truck loads of mark-ups on Debt auctions to Central Banks? We should be rolling out the red carpet, and meeting them with an adult beverage with an umbrella in the glass, when these Central Banks show up to buy our debt…

To recap… The currencies held their own yesterday and overnight, but the announcement by Fitch that they were downgrading Japan’s Credit Rating, put the currencies on the selling block again early this morning. Gold is off by $16 this morning. The A$ has reached oversold levels on two different measures now… Chuck is looking for a bump here, along with looking for one in pound sterling, should the “host country bump” for the currency hold true.

Currencies today 5/22/12… American Style: A$ .9885, kiwi .7610, C$ .9820, euro 1.2760, sterling 1.5775, Swiss $1.0625, … European Style : rand 8.2525, krone 5.9325, SEK 7.12, forint 232.75, zloty 3.3915, koruna 19.7660, RUB 31.12, yen 79.75, sing 1.2695, HKD 7.7660, INR 55.40, China 6.3230, pesos 13.71, BRL 2.0415, Dollar Index 81.28, Oil $92.09, 10-year 1.77%, Silver $28.16, and Gold… $1,580.15

That’s it for today… Man, sometimes I have noodles for brains… yesterday, I listed the people that helped me at the Las Vegas Money Show, and left off an important member of the group… to that, I apologize, Dawayne… You did a great job! Well… I saw my dentist, the new mommy, Holly Ellis yesterday, she’s so nice to me… And then I saw my oncologist… I had a really bad incident in Vegas last week, and no I didn’t pull my own tooth, or marry Heather Graham (but that doesn’t sound bad!) … But, I’m fine now… no worries, and I did speak on the same day as the incident, so as always, I carry on, despite my obstacles! HA! I did get to see my siblings last Friday… of the original 7, there are 5 of us still here… and with that, I’ll get out of your hair today, and hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday!

Mid-Day: The NASDAQ is UP +9.72 (+0.34%) to 2,856.93 while the Dow is also UP +46.89 (+0.37%) to 12,551.17.

Mid-Day Market Commentary: Some RegMed stocks selectively … climbed Tuesday after a shaky open, with all 10 S&P sectors trading in positive territory, buoyed by a better-than-expected existing home sales report and ahead of Wednesday’s informal EU summit.The CBOE Volatility Index, <fear gauge> traded … now near 20!

Great article by Matt Herper from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/05/18/four-ways-to-make-medicine-more-like-facebook/2

Today’s Gospel:  Many RegMed stocks are up. … Mid-day, Tuesday … there are even leader(s) … than followers …. … a few more green (ups) and … moderate red (downs) and 1 black (flats) on the screen.

My favorites: 

• Aastrom (ASTM) is up +$0.02 or 0.93%  to -$2.18   with an … increasing …  mid-day range $2.18 – $2.32 with … moderate but, volume of 199K shares;

• Cytori (CYTX) is up … +$0.03 or 1.35% to $2.18 in an … increasing … trading range of $2.11 – $2.19 with …  large volume … of 454k;

• OSIR …. Drops … as traders take their profits … OSIR has declined -$0.37 or -5.82 % to $5.99 on large volume of 230K. 

Minimal upward moves:Athersys (ATHX),  BioLife Solutions (OTC BB: BLFS),  Cryo-Cell (OTC BB: CCEL), Cytomedix (OTC BB: CMXI),  ImmunoCellular (OTC BB: IMUC), International Stem Cell (OTC BB: ISCO), Opexa (OPXA), Pluristem (PSTI), ReNeuron (RENE.L), Tengion (TNGN).

Minimal downward moves: Advanced Cell Technology (OTC BB: ACTC), BioMimetic (BMTI), BioTime (Amex: BTX), Brainstorm (OTC BB: BCLI), Dendreon (DNDN),  Neuralstem (Amex: CUR), StemCells (STEM) and Thermogenesis (KOOL

 Flat: Geron (GERN),Fibrocell (OTC BB: FCSC), NeoStem (Amex: NBS), and Verastem (VSTM).

EconRecon:Existing home sales rose 3.4% to an annual rate of 4.62M units in April to their highest in almost 2 years, according to the National Association of Realtors. Economists polled forecast a 4.6M unit.

What’s new in the regenerative medicine/stem cell market … see: www.scimitarequity.com/bl0g …

OneMedRadio had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. David LaBorde of Iconic Data, an Atlanta-based healthcare IT startup that came out of Healthbox, the business accelerator for health tech startups launched by Chicago-based VC firm Sandbox Industries.

The company’s lead product,  SwiftPayMD is a recently launched mobile app for iPad and iPhone that helps doctors work more efficiently when seeing patients at the hospital. It allows doctors to immediately submit patient diagnosis and billing information to their home office from the hospital via speech. Essentially, it replaces the paper billing cards that doctors use in hospitals which can create medical errors by being illegible or becoming lost or damaged. With traditional paper billing cards, physicians can also lose up to 10% of their revenue due to charges not being accounted for at the point of care.

Dr. LaBorde has over 14 years of healthcare experience. He is a Yale M.D., a Harvard M.B.A., and a Georgia Tech engineer. He spent 6 years in neurosurgery and previously worked in management consulting at McKinsey & Co and healthcare investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

Matthew Margolis:    Greetings from OneMedRadio. I’m Matt Margolis. Today, we’re speaking with Dr. David LaBorde, co-founder and CEO of Iconic Data, a healthcare IT and mobile solutions company. Iconic Data produces SwiftPay MD, a secure mobile charge capture app used by private practice physicians for hospital billing. Thank you for joining us, Dr. LaBorde.

Dr. David LaBorde:    Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

MM:       Today, we’re going to talk about the e-health boom and specifically why physician-centric management tools are so important to the improvement of healthcare, but first, let’s learn a little bit more about Iconic Data. What makes you guys unique?

DB:      At Iconic Data, we are bringing to market SwiftPayMD, which is a unique charge capture solution aimed at solving what we call a $6B problem that results from lost charges that go uncaptured by physicians providing services in the hospital but billing for those services in their office. Our solution is unique compared to our competitors because we are focused on being integration light, being easy to use, and really being a solution that a physician can simply subscribe to and go live. Their practice can go live literally with very simple steps carried out online.

Our competitors tend to be much more integration heavy. They require lengthy implementations to get going. These are associated with significant upfront costs and quite frankly, the solutions are difficult to use by the docs. They are dependent on significant manual data entry via a small device, you know, for example an iPhone. We’ve just found that taking that approach isn’t one that meets with success. Anything that interrupts the physician’s workflow and causes them to spend more time than status quo just really falls on deaf ears.

MM:    And this seems like such a simple concept and the layman might think it could have been implemented years ago when the healthcare providers first moved to the computer for example. So why would this solution not have worked five years ago? Why does it work now?

DB:  It’s a great question. It’s one of the theses of our sort of basis for moving into this business at this time, and that is specifically that as of 2012, more than 80% of physicians are now on smart phone devices and are comfortable using them in their clinical day-to-day activity. We believe that that is a significant transition for the industry and one of the enablers that have allowed for solutions like SwiftPayMD to now come to the fore and really have a go at making healthcare all it can be, much more efficient, and really help physicians run their practices more efficiently.

MM:       So you mentioned a little bit about how the physician community is accepting smart phones and etc. I was curious if you could talk a little bit about how this community is also accepting Iconic Data and SwiftPay MD.

DB:    We’ve really gotten a great response from our end users about our approach to doing what we do, essentially helping them capture charges and helping them post those charges in a shorter time period; essentially immediately in real time. We have a very simple interface that allows the physicians to create bills by simply speaking into their device. We typically talk about three simple steps, touch, talk, done. They can append to that bill a face sheet and a photograph or picture of some other source of patient demographics. That might be a patient wristband or a patient demographic sticker from the hospital. By allowing them to do this, they’re able to actually capture that information much more quickly, much more efficiently, and not be tagged with the responsibility of delivering that information to their office. As soon as they’re done, that bill is waiting on their biller’s desk to be posted into their practice management claim submission solution. That alone can result in much higher charge capture rates and significantly reduced days in receivables.

MM:    And how do you guys market yourself? I mean how do you after the physician community?

DB:    We are going to market with a channel partner strategy and so we are building relationships with organizations that already have deep and trusted relationships with physician practices across the United States. This would include the physician outsourced billing services providers, practice management consultants, the technology advisory services providers that have helped physician practices get on to electronic medical record systems. We also think that professional associations will be very meaningful channel partners for us. This includes associations for not only physicians but also the administrators that run their practices.

MM:   I want to shift gears a little bit to the concept of the e-health boom. How soon do you think it’s going to be until every single nurse, every single physician has a tablet in their hand?

DB:      Yeah, I think, you know, probably within the next five years, we’ll see a significant change in the way care is provided and the role of smart phones and tablets. I mean this is something that we see changing rapidly every day as we look at the last five years in the adoption. I mean there has really been, you know, exponential growth in how providers in healthcare organizations are adopting smart phone devices. I think everyone wants to be smart about it. Everyone wants to make sure that the appropriate policies and procedures are in place to ensure security of the information that goes on to these devices. But I think they’re really going to change the way healthcare is delivered.

MM:   Now every single sector seems to be sprinting towards digital tools that make communication with clients more substantive and more efficient, but why has the healthcare complex been so notoriously sluggish?

DB:    I think healthcare has suffered a lot from the legacy situation being that much of the automation in healthcare has developed historically around the payer side of things and getting claims submitted but not around clinical operations. So healthcare has for years been a paper-driven business and when you’re a paper-driven business, you don’t have structured data that enables a more sophisticated functionality with the information that’s being captured and logged at various points of care. Without being able to analyze data and leverage IT to, you know, provide the ability to know when a certain communication might be appropriate to occur, for example, you’re crippled and really that’s the problem that healthcare has been dealing with for decades; the fact that it is a paper-driven business.

Now with the meaningful use incentives and the adoption of EMRs and EHRs plus the now, you know, newer phenomenon of adoption of smart phones and tablets with the introduction really driven by Apple and their rolling out the iPhone and iPAD, things have changed [so] significantly that we’re going through a paradigm shift. I think that is a paradigm shift that will be for the better, but it won’t be without pain. That pain is primarily the older physicians in healthcare are somewhat more resistant to adopting technologies and that’s one of the things that — Apple has really been one of the first companies that have changed this because they’ve made it easy for the doctors to do. I think as that sort of movement continues, we’ll start to see some very interesting times in healthcare as the older physicians transition out and the newer more tech savvy physicians come in. I think we’ll really see some changes over the next 5 to 10 years around how healthcare is delivered.

MM:    Now, you’ve reported that physicians lose $6B of charges each year so I’m curious what insurance companies have been saying about SwiftPay MD as well as the prospect of gaining back $6B in charges.

DB:    Well as you can imagine, payers they want to compensate physicians for the work they do. They want to make sure they’re not overpaying and so I think one of the very exciting things about SwiftPayMD and our value proposition is we actually provide an opportunity for more accurate coding because we’re moving the actual charge capture closer to the billable episode of care. I think that insurance companies ultimately in the long run are going to benefit from solutions like SwiftPayMD because they will be able to more effectively understand the risk profile of their members and in doing so be better positioned to enroll them in wellness programs. So that’s actually something that we are very excited about. Certainly, no one wants to pay more of the premium revenue out on the payer’s side. But we actually see our solution as an opportunity to help payers better risk stratify their member population so that they can more appropriately price their premiums in addition to having the long-term benefit for the patient. Because the patient then can be appropriately enrolled in wellness programs and better manage their health.

MM:     What is your relationship with the regulatory bodies?

DB:      Well SwiftPayMD as a healthcare information technology solution, you know, it is subject to the same rules and regulations that any entity that deals with the protected health information is subjected to. So I wouldn’t say that we have any specific relationship with regulatory bodies, but we’re required to abide by the same rules and regulation.

MM:   And then what about the concept of hospitals and practices that can’t necessarily afford these kinds of subscriptions, do you have any plans to kind of roll them out to free clinics and philanthropic efforts like that?

DB:   The beautiful thing about SwiftPayMD and one of the theses of our value proposition is simply by capturing one or two lost charges[per physician], organizations using SwiftPayMD can already break even on the cost and so we think that the ROI on adopting SwiftPayMD is significant potentially, especially in those clinics and organizations that are struggling around capturing all the charges. So the great thing about our business is it pays for itself several fold and we are working on a handful of case studies that really will help us; we believe that they will be able to illustrate this very poignantly and that the prospect of a community healthcare center adopting this makes sense because it makes them capture more revenue and actually improves their financial performance despite the financial outlay to purchase our solution.

MM: So lastly, I want to circle back to your company growth efforts. What does the future hold in store for Iconic Data?

DB:   We’re very excited about the coming years. We think that we have an innovative solution that is very different from our competitor’s offering and first and foremost, it’s easy for the physicians to use. We think that will enable our channel partners to help us grow our business in a significant way. So we are very excited about the prospect of the coming several quarters.

MM:   That was a company snapshot of Iconic Data with co-founder and CEO Dr. David LaBorde. This is Matthew Margolis with OneMed Radio signing off.

MEDIA ENCLOSURE: http://www.onemedplace.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/swiftpay.jpg

The investment business and the confidence of investors have not been served well by the events surrounding the initial public offering (IPO) of Facebook (FB,NASDAQ ).

Facebook was easily the most anticipated and publicized IPO in the history of the equity markets.  It is a company that has thoroughly dominated social media with worldwide users in the hundreds of millions.  Those users have translated into billions of dollars in revenues and a billion dollars in net income in the last twelve months. 

As I had discussed verbally with many clients, those favourable attributes of the company did not necessarily mean it would be a great investment.  The pricing of the IPO would help to determine that and when initial rumours on that pricing discussed a trailing twelve months price/earnings multiple of 75 or 80 times, the issue was being priced far too rich for my liking to be a good investment.

Last week when  Apple (AAPL,NASDAQ)  was one of my top picks on BNN’s Market Call Tonight at $558.22, I had mentioned to clients that there was little logic in buying Facebook  at that multiple when I could buy AAPL at 13.5 times the trailing twelve months earnings.  Following that BNN appearance, AAPL promptly declined 5% in the next three days as investors (I believe with perfect hindsight) raised cash to participate in the Facebook issue.

Then, the perfect storm happened.  The underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley, raised the issue price to $38.00, the very highest end of the range and also increased the issue size to the maximum previously discussed.  That $38.00 issue price represented a trailing twelve months multiple of close to 100 times. 

Many investors who had “padded” their orders for Facebook to ensure they received an adequate number of shares, all of a sudden had all of the shares they had asked for and more than they really wanted, particularly at that issue price.  The final part of the perfect storm was when all of the initial trading, said to be 82 million shares in the first 30 seconds, overwhelmed the NASDAQ and created significant confusion among investors who didn’t know whether they had completed their buy or sell orders for several hours.

With an issue that was priced based entirely on the hopes of future earnings and not the current fundamentals of the company, the  combination of these events has severely damaged the stock in the first few days of trading.  As I write, Facebook is currently trading at $32.11 or over 15% below the issue price while investors have swarmed back to Apple, eradicating all of last week’s losses and then some $568.58 at the time of writing).

The events surrounding these two stocks have left investors confused and for buyers of Facebook, disenchanted.  However, it does serve to reinforce the premise that day-to-day market activity can many times be clouded by happenings that are simply “noise” in the long term.   In the long term, stocks represent a piece of ownership of a business and that business must be purchased at a reasonable price, if it is to have the potential to be a favourable investment.

Facebook may still prove to be a good investment at some point but even at the lower price, we are still not at that point.  Looking at future estimates, my question remains “why should I buy Facebook at 16 times what it is expected to earn in 2015 when I can buy Apple at 12 times this year’s earnings?”.

We have seen the price for physical gold increase for eleven straight years.  It was $273 at the beginning of 2000 and it is currently trading in the $1,600 range.  This is almost a 500% increase since the start of this bull market in gold.  However, during the same period the mining index has only increased about 214% .  Since the 2008 credit crisis, gold mining shares have greatly underperformed relative to the product they produce.  Gold peaked at $1,002 in March 2008 before the US entered the credit crisis.  Since then gold has increased about 65%, while the mining shares are down 14%. Why is there such a discrepancy between the producer and the product?

Comparing the Producer to the Product

One method for gauging the market’s sentiment for gold mining shares is by comparing an index of mining shares to the price of gold.  The lower this ratio gets, the more undervalued the miners are relative to the physical metal.  This ratio is currently at historic lows.  On a historic basis, the mining stocks have never been so cheap relative to the product they produce.  Even if you expect gold to trade sideways for the near future, one could expect the mining shares to eventually catch up to its historic ratio.  The gold mining shares would have to double from their current levels just to equal the performance of gold since the 2008 downturn. 

View a complete analysis at

http://www.europac.ca/commentary_analysis/special_reports_ca

and learn more about:

• Analyst Expectations
• Alternative Investments
• Perceived Risk Trade
• Funds Spread Thin and Share Dilution
• Margin Pressure

...and the POTENTIAL CATALYSTS for mining share price increases

• Dividends
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Increasing Gold Price and Potential Mania

Bargain hunters started buying gold after prices slipped below US$1,530 per ounce for the first time since December during yesterday’s session. Demand for gold was hit by the failure of coalition talks in Greece, which will now hold another election in June.

The euro remained under pressure today as the European Central Bank (ECB) suspended lending to some Greek banks that it said were insolvent and ECB president Mario Draghi mentioned the possibility of Greece leaving the euro zone.

Meanwhile, Spain held a debt auction today, selling €2.5 billion of three and four year notes with yields on bills maturing in 2016 topping five percent.

While hitting the euro, the Greek political turmoil and the surge in Spain’s borrowing costs boosted the safe haven appeal of the US dollar.

Gold is seen as an alternative asset to the American currency and tends to move inversely ot the greenback.

Gold traded at US$1,574/oz this afternoon, up US$34 from Wednesday’s close. Silver sugared 75 cents to US$28.02/oz and platinum tacked on US$24 to reach US$1,454/oz.

Today’s top risers in the sector were:

Greatland Gold (LON:GGP), up 19 percent at 1.14 pence at midday

Patagonia Gold (LON:PGD), up 14.5 percent at 25.19 pence

African Barrick Gold (LON:ABG), up 9.5 percent at 340.3 pence

Angel Mining (LON:ANGM), up 9.5 percent at 1.37 pence

Vatukoula Gold Mines (LON:VGM), up 9 percent at 44.7 pence

The top fallers were:

Premier Gold Resources (LON:PGR), down 20 percent at 0.46 pence at midday

Oxus Gold (LON:OXS), down 12 percent at 2.18 pence

Peninsular Gold (LON:PGL), down 10.5 percent at 13 pence

KEFI Minerals (LON:KEFI), down 9.5 percent at 2.15 pence

Kolar Gold (LON:KGLD), down 9 percent at 9.75 pence

Te European Central bank (ECB) has suspended lending to some Greek banks, which it said were insolvent. In the meantime, president of the ECB Mario Draghi mentioned the possibility of Greece existing the euro zone today, saying his preference would be for the country to remain in the monetary union, but that it wasn’t up to the central bank.

Greece is set to hold a new election in June after coalition talks between five parties ended without an agreement earlier this week.

Recent polls have suggested that the anti-bailout Coalition of the Radical Left is likely to win the new election with around 25 percent of the votes, which would put Greece’s membership in the euro zone and the future of Europe’s single currency into jeopardy.

The results of today’s auction of Spanish debt added to concerns about the European debt crisis.

The euro zone’s fourth largest economy sold €2.5 billion of three and four year bonds, seeing yields on its notes maturing in 2016 top five percent.

Brent crude, which is more exposed to the European debt crisis, dropped, while US crude futures rose ahead of the start of a reversal of the Seaway pipeline, which is expected to reduce a supply buildup in Cushing, Oklahoma – the main delivery point for NYMEX crude.

Speaking of supplies, yesterday’s report from the Department of Energy revealed that crude stocks in the US rose 2.1 million barrels to 381.6 million barrels, the highest level in more than two decades.

US light, sweet crude for June delivery, currently the most actively traded contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), rose 19 cents to US$93/barrel in morning trade in New York.

June Brent crude dropped 51 cents to US$109.24/barrel on the ICE Exchange this afternoon.

Today’s top risers in the oil and gas sector were:

Frontera Resources (LON:FRR), up 19.5 percent at 0.473 pence at midday

Sirius Petroleum (LON:SRSP), up 10.5 percent at 4 pence

Amerisur Resources (LON:AMER), up 7.5 percent at 21.23 pence

Premier Oil (LON:PMO), up 3.5 percent at 341.1 pence

Providence Resources (LON:PVR), up 3.5 percent at 550 pence

The top fallers were:

Xtract Energy (LON:XTR), down 14.5 percent at 0.381 pence at midday

Regal Petroleum (LON:RPT), down 7.5 percent at 22 pence

Antrim Energy (LON:AEY), down 7 percent at 40.25 pence

Empyrean Energy (LON:EME), down 7 percent at 7.3 pence

Gold Oil (LON:GOO), down 7 percent at 4.62 pence

PLUS was driven by speculation that it is in talks with interdealer broker ICAP (LON:IAP), which was today confirmed by the company, while Frontera got a boost from expectations of an operational update and today's announcement that DDJ Capital Management sold part of its stake.

Frontera, which is exploring for gas in Georgia, told investors this morning that DDJ has disposed of 96.1 million shares in the company, reducing its beneficial interest to 234.2 million shares, representing a 10.89 percent stake in the firm.

On message boards, investors noted that DDJ retained a substantial shareholding ahead of the anticipated update from the Republic of Georgia.

The company has previously told investors that it expected to start gas sales in April this year following the construction of gas sales infrastructure.

In its latest operational update, the company said oil production from the Mtsare Khevi field stood at 75 barrels per day of oil with wells No.41 and No.35 being brought online. In addition, shut-in daily gas production that awaits installation of sales infrastructure currently stands at approximately 57,000 cubic meters per day.

With current continuous drilling plans, gas production is expected to increase as this year progresses, the company added.

While Frontera rallied 16.5 percent to 0.46 pence, PLUS Markets saw its value more than double in early deals after revealing that it is in talked with interdealer broker ICAP about selling its PLUS Stock Exchange.

Shares in PLUS changed hands at 0.63 pence in early deals, up 150 percent from Wednesday’s close.

The statement was issued in response to a story in the Financial Times, which reported that PLUS was negotiating with ICAP.

“As indicated in previous announcements, the board believe that this would be in the best interests of shareholders to preserve remaining shareholder value. There can, however, be no certainty that a transaction will complete,” PLUS told investors in the update.

Early this week, shares in PLUS Markets shed more than 80 percent as it closed the formal sale process after failing to find a suitor.

Cookson Group (LON:CKSN) also was in demand in early deals after initiating a strategic review of the business with a potential demerger of its engineered ceramics and performance materials  divisions among the options considered.

The industrial materials group also reported that it traded in line with expectations over the first four months of the year and its profits were ahead of the previous year despite continued losses at the Fused Silica business.

As a result, the industrial materials group lefts its full year guidance unchanged.

“Board remains confident of the group's ability to achieve further progress in the current year towards its 2013 targets, driving further value for shareholders,” Cookson told investors today.

Other companies that garnered investors’ attention today included pub group Marston’s (LON:MARS) and logistics specialist Stobart Group (LON:STOB), which both reported positive financial results today.

Marston’s saw its revenues climb 7.6 percent to £342.1 million in the 26 weeks to end March, while underlying pre-tax profits increased 14.7 percent to £33.5 million.

Tenanted and franchised operating profit rose 3.1 percent and brewing profit climbed 2.7 percent as revenues were 6.6 percent higher.

The group decided to raise its interim dividend by five percent to 2.2 pence per share n the back of the strong financial performance.

“We have delivered a good performance in the first half year against a weak consumer backdrop,” said chief executive of Marston’s Ralph Findlay.

“Our confidence that we are well positioned for the future is reflected in our declared dividend increase.”

The full year report from Stobart also revealed an increase in revenues and profits.

In the year to end February, revenues reached £551.9 million, up from £500.4 million in the previous year, while pre-tax profits rose to £30.5 million from £29.5 million.

Stobart highlighted strong contributions from its fast growing biomass division following the acquisition of the remaining 50 percent of Stobart Biomass Products in the first quarter and the Stobart Estates business.

“Over the last year, we have taken a number of major initiatives across the Group which have created the asset base, structure and operational platform to drive up performance and shareholder value in line with our four-year plan,” said chief executive of Stobart Andrew Tinkler.

“Each of the Group's divisions has good growth potential.  As we enter the second year of our plan we are confident that the changes we are implementing will deliver enhanced value across the group.”

Both reports showed up on the list of the most read RNS statements along with today’s full year results from iron ore miner Bellzone Mining (LON:BZM).

The group ended 2011 with US$153.1 million in the bank following a massive fundraising to the tune of US$236 million.

While revealing its financial results, Bellzone told investors that it expects to report on progress regarding the economic studies and resource development at its flagship project, the Kalia iron ore mine in Guinea, in the next few months.

The mine is planned to begin production in 2014 and be producing iron ore and iron ore concentrate at a rate of 50 million tonnes per annum in 2018.

The project has a 6.16 billion tonne magnetite resource – which is compliant with the JORC standard – and an oxide resource of 193 million tonnes.

Drilling results and internal estimates indicate that the Kalia mine project has the potential to host more than 10 billion tonnes of magnetite and 2 billion tonnes of oxide.

Other popular statements included an update from Range Resources (LON:RRL) and Red Emperor Resources (LON:RMP), which reported on their closely watched exploration campaign in Puntland, Somalia.

The Shabeel-1 well on the Dharoor block has now reached a total depth of 3,470 meters, having encountered a metamorphic basement at 3,430 metres, and has encountered additional potential net pay sands in addition to the previously announced 12 to 20 meter zone of significant hydrocarbon pay.

Well logs indicate three metres of potential hydrocarbon pay in several thin sand units.

They are not considered to warrant testing at this time, but do further confirm the existence of a working petroleum system, Range told investors.

The Shabeel-1 well will now be suspended for future testing and the rig will now move to the Shabeel North location with spudding scheduled for the first week of June.

The shares will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol 'FB' as demand for the stock continues to snowball.

Analysts and experts reckon only the IPO launches of US giants Visa and General Motors have been bigger.

The float promises to be one of the most -talked about financial events of this year and analysts expect the price to spike as punters pile in.

Such has been the demand for the social networking giant's securities that it has offered more shares for the public to get their hands on.

Facebook, now a household name, has added a further 96.4 million shares to the table, bringing the total number on sale to 484.4 million, it emerged today.

Tomorrow's IPO will also see Harvard graduate Zuckerberg become one of the richest people on the planet.

The massive demand for the stock has meant several of Facebook's early supporters have decided to sell their stakes.

Peter Thiel, one of the websites earliest backers, will cut his 2.5 per cent stake to less than one percent by selling 16.8 million shares.

Meanwhile, investment giant Goldman Sachs has more than doubled the shares it is selling to 28.7 million, from 13.2 million previously.

Russian firm DST Global is set to sell 45.7 million shares up from 26.3m - while hedge fund Tiger Global has increased the number of shares it is selling to 23.4 million.

Not bad for a firm, that in 2004, had a mere million users -  all of them in US universities.

Two other articles covered today’s news from Continental Coal (ASX:CCC, LON:COOL) and Silence Therapeutics (LON:SLN), whose lead drug targeting solid tumours has stabilised the condition of a number of cancer patients in early stage trials.

SLN said this morning the results ‘strongly indicate’ disease stabilisation and safety in terminally ill cancer patients using the drug, which is called Atu027.

The drug, which is aimed at treating solid tumours in cancer patients, is currently in phase I clinical trials.

Ten of the thirty-three patients trialling the drug, called Atu027, experienced stable disease after three months.

Tony Sedgwick, Silence's chief executive, said the new data demonstrates that Atu027 can be safely administered at doses above those believed to be effective.

“Moreover, the data also strongly indicate that Atu027 is impacting the disease course and in particular providing disease stabilisation."

Two patients with neuroendocrine cancers had disease stabilisation for nine and 12 months respectively.

One of these patients also experienced partial regression of liver metastases, which shows cancer spread.

Biomarkers that are used to monitor the progression of the disease and  effectiveness of the treatment also showed improvements, while identification of sVEGR-1 as a possible biomarker was also a significant new advancement, Sedgwick added.

Another patient in the study with breast cancer also showed regression of liver metastases.

The study was designed to evaluate up to a total of eleven escalating doses of Atu027 in around 33-36 patients.

So far, across the nine completed dose levels, Atu027 was well tolerated with no dose-limiting toxicities observed.

The phase I study of Atu027 is expected to complete in July 2012.

Silence Therapeutics is a biotech specialising in ‘gene silencing’ using siRNA treatment, whereby faulty genes can be controlled or shut down.

Later in the session, Continental said it has entered into an exclusive option for the potential acquisition of a 50 per cent joint venture interest in a producing hard coking coal mine in Colombia.

The move is in line with the company’s strategic objective to diversify its coal mining operations geographically and into the higher margin coking coal market, and it will complement its existing thermal coal mining, development and exploration projects in South Africa.

The potential cost of this acquisition is US$15 million.  

Taking the option would enable Continental to operate, develop and expand an existing business, which consists of five mining concessions/contracts covering over 1,500 hectares, including the existing underground mine that has been in operation for 24 years and adjacent exploration ground.

Continental has received an indicative proposal for a new debt and commodity linked facility to fund the approximate US$15 million potential acquisition cost.  Further details will be provided once terms are finalised and the company exercises the option.

One of our reports today took a closer look at oil shale firm TomCo Energy (LON:TOM), whose shares could be boosted by the activities of Red Leaf Resources - its neighbouring firm in Utah, according to broker Optiva Securities.

Analyst Jason Robertson highlighted global oil giant Total's US$320 mln investment for a 50 per cent participating interest in Red Leaf's Seep Ridge project, which lies just 15 km away from TomCo's Holliday block.

This investment is a "significant" event for TomCo and other firms advancing oil shale projects, he said.

Both firm's plan to use the same "in capsule" technology called EcoShale to extract the oil.

"Once Red Leaf moves into commercial production, which is anticipated in 2014, TomCo is expected to then move its project forward into production with output of 9,800 bopd. 

"Seep Ridge is similar in resource size at 90 to 120m barrels to Holiday Block, which has a JORC indicated resource of 123 million barrels."

Robertson noted that, given Total’s investment, the total value of the Seep Ridge project is around US$640 million, meaning that Holliday would be worth a similar amount, once a capital expenditure commitment is made.

TomCo has a 100 per cent interest in two oil shale leases - covering around 3,000 acres in the Beehive state, Utah - but the 123 million barrel indicated resource is part of its 1,000 acre Holliday block.

The firm's plans for this block were outlined by TomCo chief executive last summer.

The firm has a commercial agreement to use the EcoShale process, which has already been tried and tested on a pilot scale by Red Leaf.

In other news, Craven House Capital (LON:CRV) said it is buying 517,350 shares in Farm Lands of Africa Inc (OTC:FLAB) (FLA), taking its holding to 717,350 shares, or approximately 7.8 percent.

The emerging market investment group is buying the stock for US$1.55 per share from a number of existing investors, thus paying just over US$800,000.

As at close of business on May 16, the mid price of the common stock was US$4, valuing the Craven House’s total investment in FLA at US$2.87 million.  

FLA has recently changed its name from Farm Lands of Guinea Inc to reflect its ambition and progress in rolling out its business model beyond Guinea throughout West Africa. 

FLA plans to bring into cultivation several hundred thousand hectares of land across neighbouring countries including the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Niger and Senegal.

In August 2011, Craven House announced a US$1 million investment in FLA to enable it to survey, prepare and cultivate over 100,000 hectares of leased farmland in Guinea. 

FLA continues to make very encouraging progress in relation to their operations in Guinea and has recently received a letter of interest for a multi-million dollar financing facility from a major development finance institution operating in the area, the company said.

With Euro 2012 edging closer and the Olympics also just round the corner, the broker has raised estimates slightly for the second quarter.

As a result, the target price increases a modest 5 pence to 105 pence, against the current price of 82 pence.

The biggest target price increase of the day however came for Africa-focused oil explorer Ophir Energy (LON:OPHR).

Credit Suisse raised the target by nearly 300 pence to 950 pence on the back of yet another hefty gas find off the coast of Tanzania.

Investors are going in for the kill as shares have soared since the announcement, and continue to do so today, up 10 pence to 590 pence.

There is also good news for another Tanzania-based company, African Barrick Gold (LON:ABG).

The gold miner has been upgraded by heavyweight Goldman Sachs to ‘neutral’ from ‘sell’ following the share price underperformance.

However, the broker does add that the company looks “poorly positioned” against its peers.

Shares, which slumped yesterday, have risen around 30 pence, or 10 per cent, today to 340 pence.

Shares in Dragon Oil (LON:DGO)  fell further after it announced a number of older wells on the Lam field in the Caspian Sea were choked down due to sand issues.

Dragon Oil still maintains it is on track to meet its 15 per cent production growth target for this year but Oriel Securities is not so sure.

The broker reckons the sanding issues could affect production and has downgraded its production estimate as a result.

Nevertheless, Oriel is still backing the company longer-term, with a ‘buy’ stance on the stock.

Mining engineer Shaft Sinkers (LON:SHFT) has fallen far enough says Shaft Sinkers.

It believes the long-term nature of its contracts provides long-term visibility, which sets it apart from other mining contractors.

Westhouse has a ‘strong buy’ rating and 170 pence target price on the stock, almost 100 pence more than the current price.

Sticking with the mining sector, broker Edison expects the value in Ormonde Mining (LON:ORM) to be unleashed as the company successfully completes the permitting process, fund-raising and off-take agreement at its flagship tungsten project in Spain.

“While we believe that some investor caution is still justified, the implied discount rate appears excessive,” Edison added.

The broker has a 24 pence target price on the stock, more than three times the current price of 7.8 pence, which has fallen today.

Broker Numis believes soaring smartphone sales mean mobile gambling company Probability (LON:PBTY) has an excellent chance of success.

As Ireland’s biggest bookmaker Paddy Power (LON:PAP) revealed its most impressive figures were in the mobile gambling sector, Numis reckons this points towards the increasing dominance of mobile-oriented companies.

Probability is a pure play in this area and should be well placed to reap the rewards, says the broker, which has a ‘buy’ recommendation.

With all the banks suffering from Greece’s potential exit from Europe, HSBC (LON:HSBA) is languishing at the bottom of the pile, according to Investec.

Although the broker was required to upgrade the bank to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ as it sees modest upside for the stock with its 600 pence price target, there is better value elsewhere, especially during what it calls a “bumpy recovery”.

Of the two Asia banks in the UK, the broker prefers Standard Chartered (LON:STAN), a move backed up by Nomura, and reckons investors should take a look at UK domestic banks before considering HSBC.

Shares were down this morning at 528 pence.

Nomura claims the upcoming “summer of sport” is sure to boost advertising income at broadcaster ITV (LON:ITV).

With Euro 2012 edging closer and the Olympics also just round the corner, the broker has raised estimates slightly for the second quarter.

As a result, the target price increases a modest 5 pence to 105 pence, against the current price of 82 pence.

The biggest target price increase of the day however came for Africa-focused oil explorer Ophir Energy (LON:OPHR).

Credit Suisse raised the target by nearly 300 pence to 950 pence on the back of yet another hefty gas find off the coast of Tanzania.

Investors are going in for the kill as shares have soared since the announcement, and continue to do so today, up 27 pence already at 607 pence.

There is also good news for another Tanzania-based company, African Barrick Gold (LON:ABG).

The gold miner has been upgraded by heavyweight Goldman Sachs to ‘neutral’ from ‘sell’ following the share price underperformance.

However, the broker does add that the company looks “poorly positioned” against its peers.

Shares, which slumped yesterday, have risen around 20 pence, or 6 per cent, today to 329 pence.

Being that I was asked <multiple requests> to repost this … from a blog topic title:

•  Referencing our sector: 5/14/12, What is the message of the market; blame it on the Greeks or start wearing a hoodie?

Let’s get back to my “hoodie” comment at the beginning of the week, “to a tech geek, indifference to dress is a badge of pride because any creative endeavor, whether it’s coding software or writing novels, goes better if you can forget about yourself entirely, forget about how you look, what you’re wearing, how people perceive you”…  

• Bill Gates used to dress like a homeless guy;
• Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck;
• Mark Zuckerberg wears the hoodie” …

So how would we envision … leading stem cell geeks … envision the current CEO’s … I will take a stab …

• Chris Calhoun, CEO of Cytori (CYTX) with a wetsuit and a surfboard waiting for the … “coming”  … perfect <regulatory> wave as it is swelling …

• Gil Von Bokkelen, CEO of Athersys (ATHX) on the bridge of a naval destroyer hoping to “launch” the hellfire missile of stock appreciation or push the “depth-charge button” on short sellers …

• Tim Mayleben, CEO of Aastrom (ASTM) as a mason and bricklayer … solidifying the stone of each upright as he builds the “Stonehenge” of tomorrow … or even:

• Dr. Robin Smith, CEO of NeoStem (Amex: NBS) as a fully armed to the teeth “whirling dervish” trying to … “fight off and exit” … the Chinese hordes!

 Do you agree … what do you think … email your thoughts … any others …?

Mid-Day: The NASDAQ is DOWN -21.66 (-0.75%) to 2,852.38 while the Dow is also DOWN -49.08 (-0.39%) to 12,549.47.

Mid-Day Market Commentary: Some RegMed stocks opened higher (ASTM, CYTX, OSIR and STEM) but, struggled with … buoyancy … and keep struggling  to gain footage and visibility … in choppy trading  from …  macro events on Thursday, as more economic reports … confuse the markets. The CBOE Volatility Index, <fear gauge> traded near 21, yet again.

RegMed stocks have moved modestly lower in …mid-day … trading on Thursday, extending the downward move seen in recent weeks. The major averages have slipped into negative territory after ending the previous session at their worst closing levels in over 3 months. The early weakness … continues and … likely reflects continued concerns about the financial situation in Europe, with traders keeping an eye on the latest developments in Greece. Traders are also digesting the initial jobless claims report, which showed that claims unexpectedly came in unchanged.

Today’s Gospel:  RegMed stocks are down. … Mid-day, Thursday … there are few leader(s) …an even green (ups) and red (downs) and 4 black (flats) on the screen. There doesn’t seem like there’s any specific news headline, but it’s more of the same worries in Europe and investors are nervous!

My favorites: 

• Aastrom (ASTM) is down +$0.04  to $2.21 with a … decreasing …  mid-day range $2.16 – $2.27 from yesterday’s $2.33 -$2.43 with … moderate but, better volume of 205K shares;

• Cytori (CYTX) is up and down … since yesterday … in an decreasing trading range of $2.16 – $2.27 with …  small trading of 165k as compared to yesterday’s162K;

• Ah ha, Osiris (OSIR) is up … yet again … $0.18 or +3.39% to $5.49 in moderate volume of 111K  but, increasing trading range of $5.32 -$5.65 as compared to yesterday’s $4.93 – $5.19 and Verastem (VSTM) was gyrating up but, was backing off, then up again … $0.24 or +2.47% to $9.96.  

Minimal upward moves: Advanced Cell Technology (OTC BB: ACTC), BioMimetic (BMTI), ImmunoCellular (OTC BB: IMUC), International Stem Cell (OTC BB: ISCO), Opexa (OPXA), Thermogenesis (KOOL)

Minimal downward moves: Athersys (ATHX), BioTime (Amex: BTX), Cytomedix (OTC BB: CMXI),Dendreon (DNDN), Geron (GERN), Neuralstem (Amex: CUR), Pluristem (PSTI), ReNeuron (RENE.L), StemCells (STEM), Tengion (TNGN).

Flat: Cryo-Cell (OTC BB: CCEL),Fibrocell (OTC BB: FCSC) and NeoStem (Amex: NBS).

EconRecon: Jobless claims came in at 370,000, unchanged from the previous week’s revised figure. Economists had expected jobless claims to edge down to 365,000 from the 367,000 originally reported for the previous week. On the economic front, leading indicators dipped 0.1 percent in April, falling for the first time in seven months.  Economists had expected the index to increase 0.1%. The pace of factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region unexpectedly contracted in May, plunging to minus 5.8 from 8.5 in April, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank. Economists had expected for a reading of 10.0.

What’s new in the regenerative medicine/stem cell market?

Dendreon’s (DNDN) rival J&J’s Zytiga is giving Provenge a run for share pricing dropped 11.83% in mid-day trading after Johnson & Johnson’s rival medicine Zytiga helped high-risk patients in a study. DNDN slid to $7.60.  Zytiga, approved last year to treat metastatic prostate cancer, helped eliminate tumors in people whose malignancy hadn’t yet spread beyond the prostate gland. Zytiga, the once-a-day drug costs about $5,000 a month, while Provenge treatment costs $93,000. DNDN had plunged 25% on May 8, the most in 6 months, after growth this year will be “modest” and its first-quarter loss fell short of estimates. DNDN also disclosed in a May 7 filing that the SEC opened a probe that may be related to the withdrawal of a revenue estimate last year.

Let’s get back to my “hoodie” comment at the beginning of the week, “to a tech geek, indifference to dress is a badge of pride because any creative endeavor, whether it’s coding software or writing novels, goes better if you can forget about yourself entirely, forget about how you look, what you’re wearing, how people perceive you”.  Bill Gates used to dress like a homeless guy, and Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck, Zuckerberg wears the hoodie” …

We all need … levity … for this market! So how would we envision … leading stem cell geeks … envision the current CEO’s … I will take a stab … Chris Calhoun, CEO of Cytori (CYTX) with a wetsuit and a surfboard waiting for the … “coming”  … perfect <regulatory> wave as it is swelling … Gil Von Bokkelen, CEO of Athersys (ATHX) on the bridge of a naval destroyer hoping to “launch” the hellfire missile of stock appreciation or push the “depth-charge button” on short sellers … Tim Mayleben, CEO of Aastrom (ASTM) as a mason and bricklayer … solidifying the stone of each upright as he builds the “Stonehenge” of tomorrow … or even Dr. Robin Smith, CEO of NeoStem (Amex: NBS) as a fully armed to the teeth “whirling dervish” trying to … “fight off and exit” … the Chinese hordes!

STEM completed the first planned interim safety review of the P1/2 spinal cord injury clinical trial, which indicated that the surgery, immunosuppression and the cell transplants have been well-tolerated. The trial, which is designed to evaluate the safety and preliminary efficacy of HuCNS-SC® cells (purified human neural stem cells), represents the first time that neural stem cells have been transplanted as a potential therapeutic agent for spinal cord injury. All patients enrolled were transplanted with a dose of 20M cells at the site of injury in the thoracic spinal cord.

The Bottom Line: There were no abnormal clinical, electrophysiological or radiological responses to the cells, and all the patients were neurologically stable through the first 4 months following transplantation of the cells. All patients received HuCNS-SC cells through direct transplantation into the spinal cord and were temporarily immunosuppressed.  The trial, which is being conducted at Balgrist University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland, is the only ongoing clinical trial evaluating neural stem cell transplantation in spinal cord injury. STEM is only up $0.14 or 1.655 to $0.862 in a down market.

ADVENTRX Pharmaceuticals     0.54 +0.00 (+0.92%) Intraday 3 Month 6 Month 1 Year

The specialty pharmaceutical company's product portfolio includes: ANX-530 or Exelbine(TM), a novel emulsion formulation of the chemotherapy drug vinorelbine indicated for treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer; ANX-514, a novel emulsion formulation of the chemotherapy drug docetaxel indicated for the treatment of advanced cancer; and ANX-188, a novel, purified, rheologic and antithrombotic compound initially being developed as a first-in-class treatment for pediatric patients with sickle cell disease in acute crisis.

Brian M. Culley, the firm's CEO and Director sat down with BioMedReports to talk about his firm and the antithrombotic and rheologic polymer (ANX-188) which they are planning to test in sickle cell disease soon.

"It's a very interesting drug," explains Culley. "It has the ability to bind to damaged portions on cells, in particular red cells and white cells in the blood stream. What it does is it acts like a membrane sealant. It binds to damaged regions and sort of coats or protects them. By doing so, it lowers viscosity. When you have lower viscosity in the blood stream, your cells are able to transport more easily and they can do their job such as deliver oxygen to tissues. So it is a drug that allows the cells to deliver oxygen to tissues when otherwise they would have some difficulty in doing so due to viscosity. So it lowers viscosity of the cells in the blood stream."

The full interview with Culley can be seen below:

In this special series we present emerging technologies which hold the promise to significantly improve the prognosis of patients diagnosed with prostate cancer, and cancer in general. Each day we will showcase a new emerging company, providing an eloquently detailed description of the intriguing technology. The goal of this series is to deeply investigate the unique technology that may soon change the mainstream approach to prostate cancer. At the end of the week, we will publish all treatments together.

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The prostate is a component of the male exocrine gland system that is essential for normal reproductive function. Secretory fluid produced by the prostate physiologically supports male gamete cells to successfully achieve conception.

In medicine, prostate cancer is the most common cancer found in the male population, afflicting one in six men. It is the second leading cause of cancer-based deaths amongst men in the US . Malignancy of the prostate has profound health consequences, including urinary dysfunction, pelvic pain, and erectile dysfunction ^4-6. The disease rarely presents under the age of 40, making age the most significant risk factor – the longer life expectancy of men and the high morbidity/mortality observed makes prostate-cancer a high need condition.

Although there are several treatment options available for patients diagnosed with progressive prostate cancer, the currently used modalities of treatment have important limitations ^7,8.

Surgical intervention – such as prostatectomy – comes with the normal risks associated with surgery, as well as the possibility of resultant erectile and urinary dysfunction.

Radiotherapy such as XRT (external radiation therapy) and brachytherapy provide localized radiation to the prostate that can salvage surrounding healthy tissue, but is often associated with urinary urgency and frequency, painful urination, and rectal inflammation.

Androgen deprivation hormone therapy, which includes the newly approved drug Abiraterone, provides a pivotal treatment regimen to inhibit the progression of advanced prostate cancer, but results in serious side effects that include cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, cognitive deficits, and insulin resistance.

Chemotherapy, which includes the newly approved drug cabazetaxel, is important for treating refractory prostate cancer, but does not salvage healthy tissue and includes significant side effects, such as blood cell suppression and peripheral neuropathy.

Therefore, there remains a high-need for a broad-based therapeutic regimen to treat prostate cancer with minimal side effects.

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Inovio Pharmaceuticals is an emerging leader in the development of powerful therapeutic DNA vaccines that serve to actively induce a potent immune system response against and for the treatment of infectious diseases and cancer. DNA vaccines function by expressing the genetic material for a specific disease-marker, or antigen, in conjunction with a known immune adjuvant within the cells of the patient. Expression of the antigen/adjuvant by the patient’s cells mounts an acute immune response against the disease that serves to treat the condition by decimating the afflicted cells. DNA vaccines are the next generation of vaccine technology providing significant improvement over the attenuated pathogen protein-based vaccines conventionally used. Unlike their older counterparts DNA vaccines provide scalable production capabilities, increased shelf life stability, increased safety profile with no risk of causing the disease, and most importantly, mounts an immune response that provides the protective immunity seen with today’s vaccines, as well as therapeutic treatment of the ongoing disease.

Although DNA vaccines hold the potential to serve as breakthrough therapies for high-need unmet medical conditions, their clinical development has been hampered by significant obstacles. Two principle challenges have been the efficient transfer of the DNA vaccine into the cell of the patient and the development of vaccines that can mount an immune response against the different strains of an individual virus. To this end, Inovio has developed breakthrough, proprietary DNA vaccine design and DNA delivery platforms. The companies SynCon-DNA vaccine design technology utilizes bioinformatics, extensive genetic data, sophisticated mathematical algorithms and ultra-powerful computing to develop vaccines that are competent to mount an immune response against different viral sub-types of a given virus family. In pre-clinical studies Inovio has shown that its SynCon DNA vaccine design is able to elicit an immune response against multiple sub-types of HIV, HCV, HPV or influenza virus.

To deliver its DNA vaccines, Inovio employs its Electroporation DNA delivery platform. This technology works by applying controlled, millisecond electrical pulses across the injection site where the DNA vaccine is being administered. The electrical pulses create a huge increase in the permeability of the cells at the injection site enabling a dramatic uptake of the DNA vaccine that was previously not possible. Furthermore, the electorporation itself serves as an immune adjuvant that enhances the response by the immune system. In pre-clinical and clinical studies Inovio has shown that in comparison to injection alone, electroporation increases expression of the vaccine by over 100-fold and develops an immune response that is approximately 100-fold stronger. Electroporation has been shown to be tolerable without anesthetic, cost effective in manufacturing processes, and does not elicit unwanted side effects thereby enabling repeated use for administration. Taken together, Inovio’s proprietary DNA vaccine design and delivery platform poises the company at the forefront of clinically actualizing this therapeutic modality. Inovio’s DNA vaccine indicated for the treatment of prostate cancer is currently in Phase I clinical trials.

MEDIA ENCLOSURE: http://www.onemedplace.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/man.jpg

“It’s a complete tempest in a teapot.” -Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan on April 13^th, discussing large derivatives trades that became known as the “London Whale” trade.

“In hindsight, the new strategy was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored.”  -Jamie Dimon, on May 10^th, after disclosing that the losses on the “London Whale” trades exceeded $2 billion in less than six weeks.

"I think gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but I think civilized people don't buy gold. They invest in productive businesses." –Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

“Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” – US President James Garfield, 2 weeks before his assassination.

"The future’s uncertain, and the end is always near." –Jim Morrison, Roadhouse Blues

Well, here we are again.  It’s getting a little tiring spending so much time talking about a Mediterranean country with a GDP roughly the equivalent to the State of Washington’s, but Greece is yet again in turmoil, and now threatens - as we had predicted several times over the last couple of years- to bring down the entire Eurozone.  At last count, more than 10 European leaders who supported the austerity and bailout measures have been replaced, most recently in Greece and France.   In France, once half of the “Merkozy” duet working hard to keep the Eurozone together, voters replaced Sarko with a socialist leader who had run on a platform that espoused, among other things, increasing the tax rate to 75% on earnings of over 1 million Euros.  

But it’s still tiny Greece that is at the epicentre of the troubles, and there, elections have seen the interim leader thrown out, and big wins for once-marginal parties that espouse an end to austerity, and in some cases, an outright dissolution of the Eurozone.  In fact, as of the time of this piece’s writing, Greece’s efforts to form a coalition government have failed, and now the only option left is another election.   One of the parties, Syriza, which the Financial Times describes as “…a coalition of a dozen far-left factions…” has publicly stated  that they will not agree to help form a coalition unless the other coalition members agree to renege on the bailout agreement that was signed just a couple of short months ago, which might not be of any concern, if it weren’t for the fact that Syriza came in second in the polls, and will inevitably form part of the next government, unless the results from the re-election are materially different!  It’s gotten so bad in Greece, that even the London bookmakers, known worldwide as ready to make bets on pretty much anything under the sun, have stopped taking bets on Greece exiting the Euro Zone by year end, after having slashed the odds repeatedly.

Not surprisingly, Germany’s Angela Merkel was quick to point out that the deal reached with Greece was not up for renegotiation.  Germany would be rather embarrassed if all the money they had thrown at the Greek problem went up in smoke, but this is precisely what Syriza has in mind.  Historically, isolating the German chancellor hasn’t worked out too well for anyone….  And does anyone really think that if Greece manages to renege on their debts, other countries, like Portugal say, or heaven forbid, Italy or Spain, wouldn’t want to see their burden eased as well?

Turning to Spain, which is a much larger economy, and hence a much larger problem than Greece, the situation is precarious at best.  More than 50% of Spain’s youth are unemployed, causing many to worry about the potential for unrest.  Spain’s economy officially “double-dipped” into recession (and they aren’t alone; the UK also double-dipped!).  Spanish banks’ loans represent over 170% of GDP, and the amount they borrowed from the European Central Bank jumped from 169 billion Euros in February to a staggering 316 billion Euros in April!  In the month of March alone, Spanish citizens pulled out 65 billion Euros of deposits from Spanish banks.  And here’s the kicker: Spain is supposed to contribute over 95 billion Euros to bail out… Greece!

In this environment, how long before capital controls are openly debated in the parliaments of Europe?  If you have money in a European bank today, you may want to take Hugh Hendry’s (Eclectica Asset Management) now famous advice: “I would recommend you panic”!  It sure seems that Greek citizens have taken his advice to heart: published reports suggest Greeks pulled more than 700 million Euros from their bank accounts on May 15^th alone!

Let’s turn our view Stateside, not because there isn’t more to say about Europe, but we see no need to flog a dead horse.  Feel free to call us if you want additional depressing news about Europe, OK?

Against the dismal backdrop of Europe, it’s certainly lucky that the US economy has turned the corner.  It has turned the corner, hasn’t it?  If the only thing you looked at were some of the economic indicators that came out early in the first quarter of this year, you could be forgiven for thinking that it had.  Our view is that the early economic numbers were positively impacted by unusually warm weather experienced throughout much of the continental US during the first couple of months of 2012.  Regardless of the reason for some of the better-than-expected data, things have changed course significantly in the second quarter. 

As David Rosenberg points out in a recent piece, more than two-thirds of the economic data are now coming in below expectations.  Consumer confidence fell for the 2^nd month in a row to 69.5 (the average number during recessions is 78, so what are we in now?).  March durable goods posted a 4.2% decline, the largest drop since January 2009!  Oh, and they revised the previous month lower by almost 10%.  April ADP employment numbers came in at 119,000 versus an estimate of 170,000.  The Philly Fed May Business Index just came out, and it was expected to rise 8.5%, but instead came in at a decline of 5.8%!  And so on, you get the picture….  We maintain that there will be more money printing announced shortly.  Stay tuned.

You don’t have to take our word for how bad the US economy is, just have a look at the Treasury market.  Sure, the Fed has purchased over 60% of all bonds issued last year, but we think that the low yields we are seeing today go far beyond that.  The 10-year Treasury at under 1.75% and the 30-year at under 2.85% sound decidedly unattractive.   Corporate spreads have widened out, so if you are looking for yield, there are better places to put your money today.

Sadly, things are even worse in Japan.  Our last piece was all about our reasons for thinking Japanese yields are headed higher, so we won’t belabour the point, but in case anyone was wondering whether things have gotten any better, take a look at this chart, courtesy of Zerohedge, showing Sovereign debtas a percentage of government revenues:

Nope.  Not getting better.

So with all this doom and gloom, what do we like, you may ask?  We’re buying what the IMF is buying: gold!  Yes, the IMF was selling gold to emerging countries’ central banks quite recently, but now they are buying, and the reason, as QBAMCO pointed out recently: “…there is a need to increase the Fund’s reserves in order to help mitigate…elevated credit risks”.  We couldn’t agree more.  The only difference is that we believe that gold producers are even more attractive than gold bullion at current prices.  Have a look at the charts below.  Gold has officially dropped 20% from its high, but the junior miners have been decimated, and even the relatively safe senior producers, like Barrick Gold, are off significantly.  In fact, the last time Barrick traded at these prices, gold was more than $600 cheaper!   At these prices, Barrick yields far more than money market rates, and roughly 10% more than the S&P 500, and Barrick’s dividend has been increasing, with a 33% increase announced just last quarter.  From 2001 to 2011, their earnings went up tenfold.  The company has indicated that they expect to increase production from 7 to 9 million Oz over the next 2 years.  So here is a company that trades at less than 8x trailing earnings, the earnings are increasing, the dividends are increasing, and the stock has… gone down signficantly.  ‘Nuff said.

We want to be perfectly clear on this: we believe the gold stocks represent value unlike anything we’ve seen since the 2009 market lows.  Several of the juniors are now trading well below cash value, one we’re familiar with is trading at just two-thirds of the value of its net cash position.  If that piques your interest, call us for more details.

Source: Stockcharts.com

We can’t let Charlie Munger’s comments about gold go unchallenged, so, presented below, is our full response, readers can determine for themselves what “civilized people” should do:

As an aside, we don’t think it was the Jewish people in Vienna in 1939 who were uncivilized….

Similar opportunities exist in the energy space.  To give just one example, Pengrowth hasn’t traded at these price levels since the bottom of the market in early 2009, and now yields over 11%!

The opportunities we see in energy and gold serve to highlight some of the reasons why we believe Canada is the “one-eyed king” on the world stage.  Even in the sectors that we don’t like, such as the banks (if Jamie Dimon doesn’t know what his balance sheet looks like, how can anyone else hope to!), Canada stands out as a strong relative player.  A recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives claimed that several of the Canadian banks required substantial government support back in 2008.  In the chart below, you can see that they claim CIBC required the greatest amount of support relative to its market capitalization.

It’s only fair to point out that this report was controversial, and some of its facts and figures have been disputed.  In any case, even if their numbers are spot-on, what it serves to highlight to us is that even in the midst of the worst crisis since the Great Depression, Canada’s Federal Government had enough resources at its disposal to dispatch aid to any “needy” Canadian bank.  An important difference between 2008 and today is that Canada’s Conservative Government now enjoys a strong majority in Parliament, as well as a majority in the Upper House.  This means that if they decided that aid needed to be dispatched again today, it would be extremely difficult for the opposition parties to counter their moves.  There are few other countries around the world where this is the case today.

Canada’s economic numbers have also generally been much better than those of our neighbour to the south.  Our employment picture is getting stronger,and we aren’t printing money.Canada has also never confiscated its citizen’s gold, as the USA did in 1933.  Our tax regime is getting more competitive, simply because taxes are rising globally!  As the chart below shows, our debt-to-GDP is in very reasonable territory, especially in comparison to the US, Japan or southern Europe!

Canada has little political dissent, other than Quebec students who are upset that they are required to pay roughly 16% of the cost of their post-secondary education!  We have no NINJA-mortgages.  No non-recourse mortgages.  No upcoming Federal elections.  No nasty disagreements with the IMF.  No money printing.  No massive youth unemployment problem.  What we do have on top of great hockey teams, maple syrup, and beer is a stable and growing economy, vast natural resources, a strong currency and a business-friendly government.  And that’s the bottom line.

A last ditch attempt to form a government failed yesterday after emergency coalition talks between give Greek parties and president Karolos Populias ended without an agreement.

The debt laden country will hold a new election on June 17 this year with polls suggesting that the anti-austerity Coalition of the Radical Left could win, putting Greece’s membership in the euro zone into jeopardy.

The political turmoil in Greece continued to stimulate demand for safe haven assets such as the US dollar, which has an inverse relationship with gold.

Bargain hunters started buying gold after it slipped below US$1,530 per ounce early today, hitting the lowest level since December.

Gold traded at US$1,540/oz, down US$4 from Tuesday’s close. Silver slipped eight cents to US$27.64/oz, while platinum held steady at US$1,427/oz.

Today’s top risers in the sector were:

Greatland Gold (LON:GGP), up 3.5 percent at 0.985 pence

Petropavlovsk (LON:POG), up 3.5 percent at 403.4 pence

Orosur Mining (LON:OSU), up 3 percent at 38.67 pence

The top fallers were:

Conroy Gold (LON:CGNR), down 13 percent at 2.61 pence at midday

Peninsular Gold (LON:PGL), down 11 percent at 14 pence

Hambledon Mining (LON:HMB), down 9 percent at 1.98 pence

Trans-Siberian Gold (LON:TSG), down 8.5 percent at 48 pence

KEFI Minerals (LON:KEFI), down 8 percent at 2.36 pence

While projections were for a gain of 1.5 million barrels in oil inventories in the US, the report from the Department of Energy revealed that crude stocks added 2.1 million barrels last week.

Meanwhile, the Greek political turmoil prompted investors to dump riskier assets including oil futures.

A last ditch attempt to form a government failed yesterday and the debt-laden country will now hold another election on June 17.

The fresh election could result in anti-austerity parties including the Coalition of the Radical Left gaining more seats in the parliament and securing a majority, which would put Greece’ membership in the euro zone and the future of Europe’s single currency into jeopardy.

Oil prices received a little support from today’s positive US data, which showed that housing starts rose more than expected last month, climbing 2.6 percent to an annualised rate of 717,000 units.

In addition, the estimate for March was revised to 699,000 from 654,000 previously.

US light, sweet crude for June delivery, currently the most actively traded contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), dropped 86 cents to US$93.12/barrel in morning trade in New York.

June Brent crude fell 50 cents to US$111.74/barrel on the ICE Exchange this afternoon.

Today’s top risers in the sector were:

Ophir Energy (LON:OPHR), up 12.5 percent at 580 pence at midday

Bankers Petroleum (LON:BNK), up 11.5 percent at 148 pence

Ruspetro (LON:RPO), up 5.5 percent at 170 pence

BowLeven (LON:BLVN), up 3.5 percent at 70.75 pence

Heritage Oil (LON:HOIL), up 1.5 percent at 124.9 pence

The top fallers were:

Jubilant Energy (LON:JUB), down 13 percent at 24.75 pence at midday

Melrose Resources (LON:MRS), down 10.5 percent at 113.09 pence

Silvermere Energy (LON:SLME), down 9 percent at 13.15 pence

President Petroleum (LON:PPC), down 9 percent at 31.3 pence

Oilex (LON:OEX), down 8.5 percent at 8.02 pence

The report revealed that the group has experienced delays with equipment deliveries for new build jackup projects along with the progressive slippage in the timing of expected contract wins.

As a result the group expects its full year profit margin to be at 3.5 percent, considerably below management expectations, while it is anticipated that revenues will be in line with last year at around US$1.1 billion.

The group added that it will likely post a small loss for the first half of the year.

Lamprell added that its profit margins should recover in 2013.

Shares in Lamprell changed hands at 120 pence this morning compared with Tuesday’s close of 294.8 pence.

Other notable movers included Yell Group (LON:YELL), which managed to tack on three percent to reach 3.31 pence in early deals despite today’s broad sell-off.

The digital services group has bought do it yourself website and online shop builder Moonfruit Limited for £18 million, which will be funded entirely from the group’s cash reserves.

The acquisition is in line with the group’s strategy to transform into a provider of print and online advertising for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), aiming to become a leader in the emerging local eMarketplace.

The eMarketplace comprises a platform and digital portal where consumers and SMEs can connect and transact.

Moonfruit is expected to add to Yell’s ability to provide websites, mobile sites and simple - "light" - commerce services to millions of SMEs. The deal also complements the acquisition of multi-store ecommerce specialist Znode last year.

“We believe there are significant strategic, cultural and operating synergies between Yell and Moonfruit,” said chief executive of Yell Mike Pocock.

“The addition of Moonfruit's services and team helps us provide competitive advantage to our global SME customers in connecting with consumers through digital, mobile and social.”

Greggs (LON:GRG) and AFC Energy (LON:AFC) also showed up among the most followed stocks of the day after Greggs updated investors on its performance and AFC said it managed to extend the life of its electrodes to over three months.

Bakery Greggs saw its sales rise 4.3 percent in the 19 weeks to May 12, however, like for like sales – which exclude the impact of new store openings – fell 1.8 percent, which the bakery said was in line with the performance for the first 10 weeks of the year.

The decline in sales came amid the “extremely challenging” trading, weak high street footfall and the rainy weather in April and early May.

During the first 19 weeks of the year, Greggs opened 25 new shops and closed five, taking the total number of shops to 1,591.

The new shops are trading well and the group remains on track to hit its target of adding a net 90 new shops by the end of the year.

Greggs expects customers’ disposable incomes to remain under pressure from high fuel, energy and food costs, however it added that sentiment could get a boost from the upcoming Olympics, the Euro 2012 football championship and the Diamond Jubilee.

In its report, alkaline fuel cell systems supplier AFC noted that the extension of the life of the electrodes is a significant development as it has identified that the first economic applications require a minimum of three months electrode life.

Electrodes enable the electrochemical reactions to occur between hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, heat and water.

The laboratory tests are continuing and are expected to yield further positive results in due course, added AFC.

“This is another milestone on our path to commercialisation. We have seen significant improvement in laboratory performance from this development; now we need to translate this to the industrial environment,” said AFC chief executive Ian Williamson.

Meanwhile, Tullow Oil’s (LON:TLW) confirmation that a drill ship has been contracted to begin work next month on further exploration of the Zaedyus discovery in French Guiana was not the only update from and oil and gas company that caught the eye of investors this morning.

Other reports that made the list of the most read RNS statements included an interim management statement from Soco and Polo Resources’ (LON:POL) announcement of an increase in its stake in African operating group Signet Petroleum.

Polo has exercised options for nearly three million shares worth US$10 million, which will be used to fund Signet’s exploration activities in Tanzania, Burundi, Namibia and Benin.

The company now has 7.8 million shares in Signet, which gives it a 17.9 percent stake.

The report from Soco revealed that its second production platform at the Te Giac Trang (TGT) field, offshore Vietnam, is on track to begin flowing oil this summer to increase production to around 55,000 barrels of oil per day.

Group output in the first four months of 2012 averaged 11,690 boepd net to the firm's working interest  -  a 358 per cent increase compared to the period in 2011.

Sector peer Gold Oil (LON:GOO) also generated interest today, reporting that the operator of its Azar Block in the Putumayo basin in Colombia has spudded the La Vega Este -1 well targeting the Villeta formation with the Caballos as a secondary objective.

The company is currently producing from the Villeta formation in its Nancy Burdine fields.

Operator Gran Tierra Energy has estimated that the well, which has a 34 percent chance of success, could flow oil at initial rates of between 1,500 and 2,000 barreos of oil per day (bopd) if all of its targets turn out to be oil bearing.

The well is expected to take 35 days to drill and if it indicated oil potential it will be completed and tested using a less expensive work over rig.

Mkango, which is focused on rare earth elements, today reported more good grades from the latest drilling at its project at Songwe Hill in Malawi.

The best result from the three holes tested so far in the stage two programme was PX013, which returned 66.5 metres grading 2.3 per cent of total rare earths including yttrium.

The result included 18.1m grading 3.2 per cent and 10.2m grading 3.7 per cent.

The three holes are part of a 25 hole programme, now on its 24th hole, that has drilled approximately 4,500 metres to date. 

Independent consultant MSA Group will start work on a NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate for Songwe once all of the all the assay results have been received.

Drilling continues to intersect broad zones of mineralised carbonatite, carbonatite breccia and fenite, Mkango said.

Will Dawes, Mkango’s chief executive added: “Grades continue to indicate there are significant zones of higher grade mineralisation and the fact that we are demonstrating continuity between the drill intersections is also positive for the resource calculation.”

The Stage 2 drilling programme will complement a 13 hole, 2,000m Stage 1 drilling programme and systematic channel sampling completed in 2011.

It is focusing on an area measuring approximately 350m by 100m comprising rare earth enriched carbonatite, carbonatite breccia and fenite lithologies, largelyexposed at surface.

Mkango added that analysis indicated the mineralised zones have the potential to extend to a vertical depth of at least 350m and remain open laterally within the extents of the Songwe carbonatite complex.

Now that Malawi’s rainy season is over, exploration will focus other rare earth targets in the Phalombe licence, which contains Songwe Hill, and on zircon and uranium targets in the Thambani licence.

Mkango owns 100 per cent of both exclusive prospecting licences, which cover a combined area of 1,751 square Km in southern Malawi.

The in-depth report on Castle Peak said two numbers point to the potential of the company, five and 50.

In short, there are five mines within a 50 kilometre radius of Castle Peak’s Akorade project with a total of 50 million ounces of gold reserves and resources.

This tells us the company is in an impressive neighbourhood. 

Nearology helps, but it is nothing without the right geology, funding and exploration expertise. 

Castle Peak has a tick in each of these boxes, which makes a mockery of the company’s current valuation of just over C$10 million.

Finance first. In total, C$8.5 million will be provided by two cornerstone investors – Grizal Enterprises and Beijing Donia Resources and its affiliates.

Grizal, which has an investment in another exploration company exploring an area just north of Castle Peak, has committed C$3 million in return for a 15 per cent stake.

Beijing Donia and affiliates, meanwhile, will take a 30 per cent of Castle Peak in return for C$5.5 million of investment. 

This will fund up to 10,000 metres of drilling – half of which will be follow-up, with the remainder used to assess new targets.

“We are well financed throughout this year to execute on our exploration and discovery strategy,” said chief executive Darren Lindsay.

Akorade is a patchwork of nine concessions with Castle Peak owning between 90 and 100 per cent of each. 

The outlier is POW, where the stake is 82.5 per cent, though Lindsay is hopeful Castle Peak will eventually increase its stake. 

Two fully-owned concessions, meanwhile, carry a 2.5 per cent net smelter royalty; and one fully owned concession is held with no subjects.

The company’s land position represents many years of hard negotiation with concession holders and was assembled for US$8.2 million. This includes the cost of taking over the private company that originally assembled the land package.

Proactive also covered today’s news from Connemara Mining (LON:CON), which has completed an airborne survey over a block of five licences in the Wicklow and Wexford areas of Ireland which may have uncovered previously unknown potential gold targets.

The work is part of a joint venture between Connemara and Hendrick Resources of Canada under which the latter will earn a 75 per cent interest in the licences by spending €1 million.

The magnetic, very low frequency and radiometric survey is being processed by Terraquest in Canada. 

Initial analysis carried out on the raw data by Hendrick in Canada indicates the presence of previously undetected blind targets.  Final results are due within six weeks.

Connemara chairman John Teeling: "Gold in the Wicklow hills has been known for over 200 years but finding commercially viable deposits is a far more complicated issue.  

“Dale Hendrick, an acknowledged expert in evaluating airborne survey results has done some work on the raw data from the survey.  

“He believes that he has identified previously unknown 'potential' targets for gold deposits.

In oil and gas, Dragon Oil (LON:DGO) has successfully completed and tested the Dzheitune (Lam) 28/169 development well in the Caspian Sea, offshore Turkmenistan.

Dzheitune (Lam) 28/169 was completed as a single producer to a depth of 2,010 metres. 

It tested for initial production at 1,775 barrels of oil per day (bopd). The rig has skidded to the next slot and spudded the Dzheitune (Lam) 28/172 well.

Early in the second quarter, a number of older wells were choked down to minimise possible production of sand which had an impact on the oil flow from these wells. 

The company is gradually bringing the wells back to normal flow levels by installing sand screens in some of those affected older wells as well as desanders on certain platforms in areas prone to sand production.  

Over the last two years, Dragon Oil has been installing sand screens on newer wells to control sand production and to ensure effective oil flow from well completions, and it will continue to do so in 2012. 

Taking into account the performance in the first quarter of the current year and estimates for the second, the company is forecasting average gross production in the first half to be around 10-15 per cent over the average gross production level of 58,000 bopd achieved in the first half of 2011.

Another article was dedicated to regenerative tissue specialist Tissue Regenix (LON:TRX), which today retained its ‘buy’ rating from Daniel Stewart. The broker said last year's funding has left the company well positioned to accelerate and flesh out its pipeline.

Analyst Vadim Alexandre said: “Over the period the group raised £25 million via a share placing, significantly strengthening its balance sheet. 

“As such, we expect the company to increase expenditure on its product development programmes so as to accelerate the expansion of its pipeline.”

Tissue Regenix, which has patented a tissue decellularisation technology called dCell said, as it posted its full year results last week, that it had begun to refine the production processes for a ligament repair product using implants from a pig.

It involves taking tissue from a human donor or an animal, usually a pig, washing and treating it to remove any trace of the donor’s characteristics or DNA, at which point it can be re-used in a human body.

As well as cartilages and ligaments,  the company is working on replacement heart valves, skin and vascular patches using dCell.

Both have been dragged down in the recent market turmoil. But according to City heavyweights UBS and JP Morgan Cazenove both have fallen far enough, offering two great opportunities for value investors.

Barclays’ share price has suffered in recent weeks and UBS analysts reckon concerns over its exposure to Spain, where it has a network of more than 450 branches and employs nearly 4,000 people, are to blame for this.

The Swiss broker believes shares are finally back to a point where they’re worth a punt.

JP Morgan Cazenove analysts also think the only way is up for its top pick Kingfisher.

The DIY retailer will be crossing its fingers for an Indian summer after an April washout hit sales at B&Q.

The broker has a similarly positive attitude towards supermarket struggler Morrisons (LON:MRW), upgrading its rating to ‘neutral’ from ‘underweight’.

JP Morgan Cazenove analysts think it’s now time for investors to hold on to their cards given the recent share price fall, which makes it just a little more compelling.

The stock continued on its steadily declining path this morning.

Oil rig maker Lamprell (LON:LAM) has sunk to the bottom of the pile as a profit warning scared off investors.

Shares plummeted 60 per cent today to 120 pence on the news and analysts at Investec Securities are shaking their heads in disbelief at the company, which it says is renowned for being accident prone.

It’s safe to say the broker’s ‘buy’ stance and 450 pence price target won’t last for long.

In a double take-down this morning, UBS slashed ratings for double act Xstrata (LON:XTA) and Glencore (LON:GLEN), sending shares tumbling.

Commodity trader Glencore has its potential merger partner to blame for the downgrade as Xstrata’s production was rocked by lower coal prices and higher costs.

The miner looks like it will drag Glencore through the mill with more challenges on the horizon for alloys and coal.

Both companies have been downgraded to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’, while miner Xstrata’s target price was cut by nearly 400 pence to 1,080 pence.

Small and mid-caps got a ringing endorsement from brokers today.

In the oil and gas sector, Tethys Petroleum (LON:TPL) and Lansdowne Oil and Gas (LON:LOGP) were among the top picks.

With a significant upgrade to its resource estimate for its Kazakhstan assets announced today, Tethys’ share price, which currently stands at 45 pence, could be set to soar, says broker Fox-Davies.

And if the next well planned to be spud at the end of June comes back with more positive data, the broker thinks the shares have the potential to reach new heights.

Meanwhile, broker finnCap believes investors are missing out on the significant value in the Barryroe well in the Celtic Sea, in which Lansdowne has a 20 per cent interest.

Lansdowne's share price, which has dropped well below recent highs, offers “steep discount” for investors.

And with a target price of 70 pence, double the current share price of 35 pence, the broker sees excellent value in the Irish company.

The news today was equally promising for the mining sector.

FinnCap analyst Martin Potts sees the start of Minera IRL’s (LON:MIRL) permitting process as a sign of the company’s commitment to developing the Don Nicolas project in the face of negative market sentiment towards Argentina.

Minera views the YPF/Repsol saga as a one-off and investors shouldn’t worry about the futures of other resource companies in the country.

Sticking with South America, Brazil-focused Horizonte Minerals (LON:HZM) is making steady progress with its nickel and gold projects.

Potts says the stock is one investors should keep a close eye on as the imminent preliminary economic assessment of its flagship project will be a “significant milestone”.

The encouraging scoping study at Ferrex’s (LON:FRX) Malelane iron ore project in South Africa shows that its parameters are “promising”, says City firm Fairfax.

The broker is a big fan of the management team and reckons this is a project “well worth following”.

In neighbouring Lesotho, Namakwa Diamonds (LON:NAD) is another stock worth keeping tabs on with its diamonds far exceeding the prices anticipated at its first sale in Antwerp.

But broker Fairfax added one note of caution however. It claims the company is facing “some operational challenges” in the form of water shortages which could affect productivity.

Unfortunately this is part and parcel of operating in this terrain, the broker said.