Theragenics: Is This the Start of Something Big?

Theragenics Corp (TGX), a medical device company serving the cancer treatment and surgical markets, popped in the last half hour of trading yesterday, rising over 5% with no headlines from various news sources.

The chart below shows the price behavior. Could this be the start of something big? Possibly short sellers quickly covering in front of news? Or just a market micro-structure event - big eager buyer, no market sellers, weak specialist that faded the stock to the buyer in expectation that it will come back in after the buyer is done?

We'll possibly find out today, or maybe we won't. In any case, I bought the stock recently based on my model ranking that finds the stock relatively cheap on a valuation basis, with strong price momentum, good earnings growth and in a hot industry, Health Care Equipment & Supplies.

I typically avoid such low priced stocks, both long and short, since they tend to have much higher volatility and trading costs. Still it was an early January investment in a smaller cap, reasonably priced stock, taking advantage of a seasonal effect on top of relative investment merits. We'll see how it pans out, but after today's action, it looks intriguing.

Of course I'm not just long TGX - I own other Healthcare stocks that have done well and some Healthcare shorts that have done spectacularly.