Seeing Geron Corporation (NASDAQ: GERN) as one of the top gaining stories on the day brought back memories of when this company was the leader in stem cells. That was then, and trust of anything good happening in Geron these days comes with severe caution. In fact, we wonder if the news that was seen is anywhere near good enough to sustain a 50% gain that was seen on Thursday.

Today’s driver is a Mayo Clinic study of the imetestat drug candidate in treating multiple myeloma. TheStreet showed that four patients had complete remission and another patient had a partial remission. Another three were shown to have partial remission. We would point out that another issue is that TheStreet.com also said the data may be questionable. Does a “dead cat bounce” headline sound very positive to you?

When we see gains of 50% in late afternoon trading, on the surface it makes the news look incredibly strong. But at $5.46, it is hard to ignore that the stock hit a high of $7.79 at the peak earlier. Shares were up 86% at one point right before the open on Thursday.

This might not be as bad as many other “gap and crap” chart patterns, but it sure seems as though the excitement has been met by immediate profit taking. It is also a drop of enough magnitude that it seems like short sellers piled in for new entrances to short the stock as well.

Geron is one of those stories where the greatest days seem to be in the past. It burned so many shareholders in the past. The stock was up 50% at $5.40 on more than 45 million shares right before the closing bell and the average daily volume is only about 2.5 million shares.

We cannot question the quality of the news without more knowledge of the situation, but we do question how valid we believe the long-term implication is when the stock gapped up so much higher and sold off so much even if the gain is 50%.

How strong does this Yahoo! Finance chart look to you for a one-day gain?

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