Here's a tip for speculators in the oil market and for mining stocks generally from ROC OIL (ROC) chief executive John Doran. It coincides with our general concern over how to grade the various adjectives miners use in the progress reports. Yesterday, in an update on the Old Hills-1 exploration in onshore UK Dr Doran said the first target horizon was encountered at 822 metres and "good oil shows" were observed over a net 5-metre interval. To put things into perspective Dr Doran then philosophised that, "It's always tempting to describe oil shows in an exploration well as 'encouraging' but the reality is that until you run wire line logs there is no way of telling whether the shows relate to a producible oil reservoir or simply reflect a rock which contains immoveable, residual oil." OK, fine, but does this mean that when Dr Doran describes them as "good oil shows" it is not as good as "encouraging oil shows"? Roc Oil rose 2c to $1.64.
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Every interim and preliminary profit reporting season ends with an unseemly mad scramble to get the results out on the last day. Now the scramble is likely to be even more chaotic. The reporting period has been shortened from two and a half months to two months. Theoretically, this means all the companies which report in the last two weeks of the season, plus the hundreds of dogs which report on the last day already, will now all report on the same day. The PDF will go into meltdown. What it also means, of course, is that the small companies struggling for attention from analysts and investors will receive even less attention. But Ferret has a piece of good advice for them. Stop stuffing around and get the results out early. How some companies can live with themselves for taking up to 11 weeks to add up the numbers is beyond comprehension. Here's another price of free advice - change your balance date. Everyone will be happier then with profit reports coming out all year and not only in the two days at the end of the season on the last days of February and August.
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There's no denying NAB has been damaged in the sharemarket over the forex disaster although it's been joined by the other banks in the falls column over the past two days. NAB yesterday fell 32c to $29.52, for a total loss of $1.30 since the balloon went up last week, or a loss in market value of almost $2 billion. But these sorts of losses (and wins) are common in NAB as the shares wax and wane over the year, often for no reason at all. Why only late last year the shares fell virtually without let from $31.59 on October 22 to $28.53 on November 18. That was a loss in market value of more than $4.5 billion. By pure coincidence that sell-off followed an announcement that the board of directors had renewed Frank Cicutto's contract as chief executive officer and managing director until October 2006.
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Punters in AFT CORPORATION (AFT) are on tenterhooks. It says a communication just in from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control in Beijing has advised that complete testing of the company's 50 per cent-owned Microgenix Air Purification Equipment has not been finalised. Why? Because of the start of the annual Spring Festival. It's not all hanging by the fingernails, though. The Beijing centre says, "We are confident, from the results we have seen so far, that the Microgenix Equipment destroys a range of bacteria and viruses including SARS.". AFT hit 7.7c before closing at 7.3c, up 0.1c on the news, with a further 51 million shares changing hands. The stock has been one of the busiest by volume in recent days. It's traded a total 152 million shares in the past four days with the price up from 6.9c.
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The market was curiously unexcited yesterday by news VITAL CAPITAL's (VIT) investee company Vital Health Sciences had filed patents for a new pharmaceutical drug for preventing and alleviating atherosclerosis (the leading cause of heart disease and strokes), as well as Alzheimer's, diabetes, leukaemia and "many other diseases" (now there's an ambit claim for you!). The shares rose 1.5c to 24.5c at first but then slipped to close at 23c. Maybe buyers had enough after splurging on 5.8 million shares ahead of the announcement last Friday as the price rose 3c to 23c.
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When METABOLISM HEALTH (MHL) listed at the start of December it described itself as a "health and wellbeing group". It was anything but as a stock. The 20c share had their best price of 14c on debut and it's been losing ground ever since. It was down to only 6.8c when it was suspended last Wednesday. Yesterday it appointed an administrator. The company said on listing it was one of the first in Australia able to identify some of the causes of weight gain and obesity and deliver individually tailored solutions to assist clients to manage their weight and energy levels with its 19 clinics throughout Victoria, NSW and Western Australia. It planned to have 25 centres by June next year. Executive chairman James Cowling said,"Unfortunately, it is a sad state of affairs that the poor health of Australians will be extremely good for our business." Oh, dear. ENDS !END