PositiveID Corp. PSID
We want to look at PSID from another angle this morning as we’re noticing a situation cropping up in international media that has the potential to affect the stock and its perceived value greatly.
For the better part of four months now, there has been a rising biological threat occurring in our own hemisphere. The Zika Virus is native to sub-Saharan Africa but is currently spreading across North, Central and South America at an alarming rate, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Some estimates have pinned the number of potential cases as high as four million, and thus far there have been reported cases in 21 countries from Mexica to the Caribbean to Brazil, where it appears to be the greatest threat at the moment (>>View Article)
. There is no cure, no treatment, and the disease is currently thought to spread exclusively via one particular species of mosquito. The ability to detect the virus quickly and without the need for brick-and-mortar lab testing could obviously be a useful tool in eventually bringing it and its effects under control, which are admittedly terrifying. Enter PositiveID and the Firefly Dx. We witnessed a monumental run from PSID back in 2014 when the Ebola scare reached global proportions (>>View Article) and we could be seeing the beginnings of a new scare with Zika.
While Zika is a relatively mild affliction by comparison, it’s one of its main side effects that is the reason for such concern. The infected person doesn’t feel much more than flu-like symptoms, and it clears itself up without treatment in a matter of days or weeks. However, the virus has been linked to a particularly horrific birth defect known as microcephaly, wherein pregnant women are contracting the virus and subsequently giving birth to infants with malformed skulls due to lack of cerebral development. Since October, there have been at roughly 4000 reported cases in Brazil alone. The link between the virus and microcephaly isn’t yet fully understood, adding to the potential for panic.
The Zika Virus story is now making headlines worldwide, and is likely to soon become a “household name” as experts are preparing for the possibility of an actual pandemic. Given that PSID’s Firefly Dx is rapidly approaching completed development, and the fact that once released it would be the only such device that could be configured to detect Zika in a matter of minutes instead of hours, it could offer medical professionals a real edge in combating this growing health emergency.
Stay tuned for future updates on PSID. If you didn’t catch Monday’s PSID Report we suggest checking that out now.
Options Updates
We also want to congratulate any of our subscribers who caught our excellent options ideas in yesterday’s premarket report. We’ve been striking gold on the options front all week long, and yesterday served to continue that trend.
Facebook, Inc. FB – Our idea to track FB Weekly $105-110 Calls worked out incredibly well. Regardless of which of the six strike points was chosen, enormous single-session profits were there for the taking as FB stock itself traded up from the $104 to the $110-range.
$105 Calls – Trading Range: 1.07-5.45 – Max Gain: 409%
$106 Calls – Trading Range: .78-4.55 – Max Gain: 483%
$107 Calls – Trading Range: .47-3.61 – Max Gain: 668%
$108 Calls – Trading Range: .27-2.79 – Max Gain: 933%
$109 Calls – Trading Range: .15-2.13 – Max Gain: 1320%
$110 Calls – Trading Range: .07-1.40 – Max Gain: 1900%
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Under Armour, Inc. UA – Our UA ideas were good as well, though they didn’t trade with quite the same liquidity and intensity as the FB options. Still, each of our monitored contracts in the range of UA Weekly $75-79.50 Calls did make appreciable intraday swings to the upside ranging from 118% ($75’s from 4.30-9.36) to 1700% in the case of the $79.50 Calls which ran from .25 to 4.62.
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