Are These the Market's Triple Crown Contenders? Welcome back everyone. Hope your Mother's Day weekend was a good one, and a Happy (Belated) Mother's Day to all our moms out there. The workweek is here again though, and we want to hit the ground running with a quick update on our three open trades, any of which could dole out a bigger pleasant surprise than Animal Kingdom did in Saturday's Kentucky Derby. Remember Aeterna Zentaris (AEZS)? It's our newest and youngest idea, only getting put on the board Thursday morning. That was a day early in retrospect (ugh), as this NASDAQ-listed biotech got swept up in Thursday's marketwide downdraft, and didn't pop back up until Friday. But, Friday's 4.6% rally was an important one. We're now back to the opening/purchase price from Thursday morning, and more important, we're now pointed higher again. Better still, the rebound effort gathered some volume on the way up. Just to add another layer of reason why Aeterna Zentaris is a buy here, price targets are ranging anywhere from $5.00 to $5.50 (versus the current price of $2.25) on this up-and-coming biotech stock. Why? Because the pipeline is as deep as it is wide, with two drugs in Phase I, two drugs, in Phase II, and two drugs in Phase III. Most of them are cancer treatments or cancer-related. And, the preliminary results for most of them look awesome. A couple of them - maybe more - could end up being abandoned as ineffective, and the company's still got more potential winners than many of its peers with all-or-nothing pipelines. The timeframe here for its most-ballyhooed drug, perifosine, is an expected approval around 2013/2014, with net profits for the company expected to start by 2015. You guys know how this works with biotech though..... these stocks trade looking about two to three years into the future. Anyway, not gonna' bury you in the details. Just know there's more than mere 'hype' with AEZS. One thing has become crystal clear about one of our other positions, AVANIR Pharmaceuticals (AVNR) - the short-sellers are going after it. The current short interest is about 34% of the float (as of mid-April). That's not a complaint from us; that's just trading. In fact, in a goofy, twisted way, that potentially could be a good thing for us, since AVNR has continued to hold up and even inch higher. Sooner than later, all those short position holders will have to fold their hand by buying it back (to cover). Otherwise, the risk of the stock continuing to creep higher just gets too high for those bears. So, we'll continue to deal with the fact that it's only inching upward, knowing a short-covering rally could be in the cards. And it may well be today. By the time you read this, AVANIR may have posted Q1 earnings. The pros were/are looking for a loss of $0.15 per share, but that's not really that big of a deal, as biotechs lose money on a regular basis. What you really want to try and glean from any announcement this morning is guidance - direct or implied - about sales of its recently-approved (Oct. 29th) Nuedexta. Last but not least, we're still hanging onto Biodel (BIOD) based on the way the recent dips have been on tepid volume, but the bounces have been on higher volume. The net progress has been zilch since February, but you can get a sense that the buyers are still testing the waters here. Biodel shaved its quarterly loss from $0.44 to only $0.21, but like we said of AVANIR, earnings are basically irrelevant for a biotech in the middle of R&D like Biodel is - there was no revenue to report. The core of the opportunity here is the future of its Humalog insulin. As for the rest of this week, we've got sponsor e-mails scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday. So unless something changes, you won't hear from us directly again until Friday. All three ideas in the meantime are good ones though, so if you're looking for a quick small cap trade, the hype's going to be swelling for all three this week (especially Thursday's small cap oil/gas play - time to zig now that everyone else is zagging). Now, let's get down to some fun...   The Market's Next Great Commentator is..... YOU! Do you have something worth saying to hundreds of thousands of traders/readers each year? Of course you do. Well, you can be our next investment-publishing rock star at our new Stock HQ. What's Stock HQ? It's the last place anyone will ever need to go to do trading research on a stock. It's a simple process: (1) Register, (2) write your commentary, and (3) hit the 'publish' button. If you can read or write an e-mail, you can publish on our new research platform. Feel free to use your own name, but if you're not ready for all the notoriety just yet, that's cool too - you can use a nickname. ['Paper Trader', for instance, has been lighting it up with some hit trades, and we still have no clue who the heck the guy is.] The kinds of content you can share currently includes: Blog entries (feel free to rant... nicely) Research reports (on a stock, sector, or broad market Articles (how-tos, reviews, analysis or opinions of news) Stock Picks (track your entire history) What's really cool is what's coming. The better your content and commentary is, the greater your 'following' will become when that functionally is finally activated in the new HQ. The time to get started and prove your mettle is now though. So what are you waiting for? You don't have to be Shakespeare! You just have to post cogent, well-reasoned thoughts and get your fellow traders thinking.   The Community's Best Dennis Askew has put his money where his mouth is with electric utility Portland General Electric Company (POR), buying it in his public portfolio on Friday after calling it a buy on Thursday. If the industry rings a bell, it may be because the site's research team said back on April 28th that electric utilities were one of the few 'must have' groups for the rest of the year. It's not apt to be a coincidence how the macro themes are aligning with the micro picks. And, both the group as well as Portland were one of the few groups and stocks (respectively) that had a bullish showing last week. When the planets start to align like this, it pays to pay attention. Are we making investing in small cap stocks harder than it should be? Of course, doing the smart thing and perhaps the right thing wouldn't be nearly as fun. Bryan Murphy, who absolutely nailed it with his bearish call on silver one day before its meltdown, is pointing out some similar 'almost' trading clues for Wizzard Software Corporation (WZE), CEL-SCI Corporation (CVM), and TEKELEC (TKLC). Congrats to Animal Kingdom for a major upset in the Kentucky Derby, but what's that got to do with trading small cap stocks? Art Bagra has a great lesson and reminder that's a perfect parallel to 2011's Run for the Roses. Uh-oh. After April's retail sales report, investors still aren't exactly clear on whether or not things are good or bad right now from a consumer's (and consumer spending) point of view. It may not really matter for some of the smaller retailers, however. John Udovich has found five that are ready to thrive no matter what the economy's going to throw at them. Men' Wearhouse (MW) and Hot Topic (HOTT) are just the beginning.   We Value Your Feedback Got comments, questions or suggestions? We want to hear from you. 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