ferrets report

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.

*****

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.

*****

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.

*****

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.

*****

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.

*****

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