A couple of days ago I replied to Cabel about my valuation ranges for RVX. A great example of why I go through the exercise was presented when I read an article about Barrick Gold (GOLD) today. In the comments that followed the article one of the commenters wrote:

I do believe investors take analyst writings with a grain of salt; knowing that they have missed one or more important and operative points. No one I know takes analysts seriously; they are one step above the funny papers; enjoyable reading but not worth much based on the full and real picture. The analysts never tell you which part of the picture they have omitted; they usually don't know themselves.

There have been a number of times in the past that I was waiting for certain inflection points to be achieved by one of the companies I owned, expecting a result which was suggested by an analyst only to have something totally different happen. By doing a little work and coming up with 3 ranges based on multiple scenarios it gives me the best opportunity to get fare value given the news that takes that company to the point of exit. The single best thing that this process does though is give me a great idea of whether the share price has gone to low or to high based on the news that drove it to that point. More often than not I have sold to quickly making a fare profit but leaving far to much on the table. Doing this work has made the wins a little more profitable and telling me to get out of something that has gone up to much when others were climbing on board. The losses, they still occur but that's just part of investing in high risk situations.

From what I have seen of the analysts reports on RVX so far, there is likely to be some major upward revisions if BETonMACE achieves 30% or greater RRR and has good or great numbers on the breakdown of the MACE events plus the effect on secondary indications. IMO the numbers will confound many investors to the upside who are both familiar and unfamiliar with this story.

All IMO, dyodd.

tada