Skip to main content

Valeant (VRX) Update: Stunning Losses for Stubborn Investors

Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) is now big headline news, as the stock's downward slide continues to punish investors, big and small. 

Hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman of Pershing Square was reported to have lost $1 billion in a single day due to VRX's latest plunge. Institutional ownership of Valeant's stock was very widespread. As mentioned in our last post, a huge number of hedge funds and mutual funds owned big positions in VRX. Smaller investors may also be feeling the hit in their personal investment accounts or in their pension funds' returns.   

Let's not focus too much on the investors who were unfortunate enough to get burned in this stock crash. The media and the investing world are already having a field day with this debacle. Instead, let's take a fresh look at the chart to better understand why so many savvy investors were hurt in this decline.

As you can see in this updated daily chart (click to enlarge), VRX had been showing signs of distribution (professional selling) for weeks heading into the fall of 2015. 

Valeant VRX stock chart decline crash


After breaking down through its 200 day moving average (the red line), the stock moved sideways for a time before plunging through the $150 level. Here's where the decline really accelerated and volume ramped up. 

Towards the end of 2015, we saw a nice rebound in VRX and a bit of chatter about how "everything would be fine" and "here is a smart place for big investors to average down and buy more", etc. Well, as recent events have shown us, that is not exactly how things played out for the investors who stubbornly held on to their bullish "thesis" for VRX.

At the start of this week, VRX was trading near $68. By Tuesday, the stock had plunged by over 50% to close at $33.49. As of today's close, VRX is trading at $29.65, 60% lower from our previous Valeant (VRX) update at the end of February. 

If you didn't read my last post on VRX, go back and check out the closing section, "How to avoid disastrous stock declines". If you know someone who is stubbornly holding on to major losses in their portfolio or trading account, share the article with them. While nothing is foolproof in investing, these simple ideas may help you pare or avoid the disastrous losses that can ruin any investor, big or small.  

“The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense. Every day I assume every position I have is wrong. I know where my stop risk points are going to be. If they are going against me, then I have a game plan for getting out." - Paul Tudor Jones, via Darvas Trader.

Related posts:

1. What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars.

2. Marty Schwartz Shares Trading, Life Wisdom.

Subscribe to Finance Trends by email or get new posts via RSS. You can follow our real-time updates on Twitter.  

Popular posts from this blog

Moneyball: How the Red Sox Win Championships

Welcome, readers . T o get the first look at brand new posts (like the following piece) and to receive our exclusive email list updates, please subscribe to the Finance Trends Newsletter .   The Boston Red Sox won their fourth World Series title of t he 21st century this we ek. Having won their first Se ries in 86 years back in 200 4, the last decade-plus has marked a very strong return to form for one of baseball's oldest big league clubs. So how did they do it? Quick background: in late 2002, team own er and hedge fund manager, John W. Henry (with his partners ) bought the Boston Red Sox and its historic Fenway Park for a reported sum of $ 695 million. Henry and Co. quickly set out to find their ideal General Manager (GM) to help turn around their newly acquired, ailing ship. This brings us to one of my fav orite scenes from the 2011 film , Moneyball , in which John W. Henry (played by Ar liss Howard) attempts to woo Oakland A's GM Billy Beane (Brad Pi

William O'Neil Interview: How to Buy Winning Stocks

Investor's B usiness Daily founder and veteran stock trader, William O'Neil share d his trading methods and insights on buying winning stocks in an in-depth IBD radio interview. Here are some highlights from William O'Neil's interview with IBD: William O'Neil's interest in the stock market began when he started working as a young adult.  "I say many times that I didn't get that much out of college. I didn't have much interest in the stock market until I graduated from college. When I got married, I had to look out into the future and get more serious. The investment world had some appeal and that's when I started studying it. I became a stock broker after I got out of the Air Force."    He moved to Los Angeles and started work in a stock broker's office with twenty other guys. When their phone leads from ads didn't pan out, O'Neil would take the leads and drive down to visit the prospective customers in person.

New! Finance Trends now at FinanceTrendsLetter.com

Update for our readers: Finance Trends has a new URL!  Please bookmark our new web address at Financetrendsletter.com Readers sticking with RSS updates should point your feed readers to our new Finance Trends feedburner .   Thank you to all of our loyal readers who have been with us since the early days. Exciting stuff to come in the weeks ahead! As a quick reminder, you can subscribe to our free email list to receive the Finance Trends Newsletter . You'll receive email updates about once every 4-8 weeks (about 2-3 times per quarter).  Stay up to date with our real-time insights and updates on Twitter .