Noble Group

A friend told me recently that Noble Group was 9c a share in 1999. It closed the 2009 at $3.25. That's a 36x returns over 10 years!!! I've not done any research on any financial engineering the company might have done in the last 10 years. So, this observation might be too simplistic.

Looking at the numbers, I find valuation for Noble rather mind boggling. To buy at the current valuation, one must be extremely optimistic about the future earnings of the company. Well, Jim Rogers thinks that prices of commodities will continue to rise in the years ahead. If we believe him, then, it might be better to buy directly into commodities or companies producing these commodities rather than commodities trading companies. I remember Musicwhiz did some FA on Noble and Olam. So, I shan't go into details here. The link to his blog is in my blogroll. As is my style, if the FA fails, I do not bother to go on to the next step which is to do a TA.

However, what worries me is that even some usually very cautious investors I know are euphoric about Noble. From a TA standpoint, if the trend is not broken, continue riding it. Having said this, Noble's rapid climb in price does not look sustainable. So, I'm doing a TA out of curiosity. The negative divergence between price and volume on the weekly chart is quite plain to see. After breaking multiple wMAs in May, it tested the 100wMA support in July and off it went hugging the upper limits of the Bollinger bands since. The shorter term 20wMA has pulled away from the longer term 100wMA and 200wMA. The spread is now quite susbtantial. Using two sets of Fibo lines, it looks as if the current price of $3.25 is at resistane. A pullback is on the cards but with such positive sentiments bouying the counter, the 20wMA, at $2.70 this week, might just be able to support the price. That would be a 15% pullback. To my friends who are vested, stay vigilant. If the 20wMA breaks, there is quite a fair bit to fall.