Targacept: Late Day Volume Surge Deserves Attention

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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by H.S. Ayoub
BioHealth Investor.com

Shares of Targacept (TRGT) traded heavily, and suddenly, late during Tuesday’s trading. While the stock price popped along with the volume surge, shares ended down 3 pennies at $8.90. The day’s total volume was more than 5x the 3-month daily average.

Targacept engages in the design, discovery, and development of drugs for the treatment of multiple diseases and disorders of the central nervous system. As of December 31, 2006, the company had four clinical-stage product candidates and three preclinical product candidates in its product portfolio.

Targacept’s market cap is a tiny $170 million with more than $54 million in cash holdings, and $1.4 million in debt as last reported by Yahoo!Finance.

I caught the volume surge in time before the end of trading and purchased shares at $9.25. While shares ended regular hours trading at $8.90, a trade of $9.37 was registered after hours at 6:04 pm, again according to Yahoo!.

Shares of Targacept did not make BHI’s BioWatch Alert list however, as a price jump of at least %5 is required before the end of regular hours trading.

But Wednesday’s trading session should prove interesting for Targacept shares. Keep a close eye on this stock tomorrow!

Source: BioHealth Investor.com

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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