RE: RE: RE: Insiders are unloading....Good post.
I'd have to say that if I had large number of vested options in BNK and had seen it go to near $5 last year, held and watched it go to well under a dollar, then saw it climb back up to near $4 - I'd be tempted to sell some and buy some things. Remember the lifestyle these folks live - you need cash to buy vacation properties, cars... This is especially true if you're going to get more options to replace those you are exercising and selling. They can lock in some profits AND participate in additional upsise on the units.
Any decent financial mind knows that you don't want to have too much of your net worth tied to one company or stock - diversification is key.
As for me, I don't have options. If I sell now, I may lock in profits (and 2009 capital gains - which I already have too much of), but I also will miss out of the upside that I believe is inevitable (timing being the only uncertain part of the equation for me). i thought BNK was a good buy last year @$4 and given the progress they've made in funding, development, staff (they've brought on some people in the past two months that are top shelf w.r.t. heavy oil extraction and processing) I think they are a good buy now. The only thing holding them back is that they've gained so much in value, so fast that most people are well in the black on this stock. They are more fearful of losing what they've made than of losing what they could make. Law of minimum regret.
I learned my lesson on this one with a small company that I bought in the late 90's - call RIM. Bought a pile in late 1998 at just over $5. I worked in wireless and thought what they had was a no-brainer winner. Just over 8 months later - I sold it all at $38 - nearly an 8 bagger. Boy was I smart. Thing was, I spoke to one of the key technical leaders at our company and he convinved me that what they had wasn't special and that they'd get crushed by Motorola and Nokia. So I made a bundle. BUT I paid a #%$load of capital gains to the government, and invested the rest in other stocks I wasn't as knowledgable about. $38 for RIM at that time is about $6.25 adjusted for splits and dividends today - about 7% of the price today ($89) - so even though I made more than $150K on RIM, if I had kept them, my gains would be over $2M by now. Believe it or not, did the same thing with Microsoft in the early 90's.
I'll not listen to the folks that say PIGS get slaughtered this time. If BNK starts not delivering on there plans, then I'll sell. Otherwise I don't care about the day to day fluctuations.
What I believe we'll see over the next little while is that speculators and dice rollers will leave BNK and real investors will enter.