Ann: JCT Healthcare Acquisition Update-XPE.AX, page-31

Another calm and measured update. This company is managing expectations very well, especially given the last three weeks of nutsoidery. No-one likes to negotiate long-term deals while their SP is spearing all over the joint. It looks deadset dodgy and makes the big fat lazy dollar wranglers nervous - especially if it's just spiraling up, up, up...

The retrace over the last (and perhaps next) few days will you would reckon dissipate much of the fizz & froth but these last two announcements are I think deliberately intended to calm the pace of trading further, too. This is a sector where every junior is treated like a con-merchant until they prove otherwise. Restrained but regular information updates to market are part of how you go about demonstrating your serious intent. This, like the last one, is superbly weighted, to shoo off the wackier TA surfers while nodding quietly to the FA longs. It's exactly what you'd hope for, if you were starting to think - against all instincts, by the way, given the product type and the peer group - that maybe, just maybe...this company is one, among the many pretenders, that really is lining up some authentically disruptive IT deals.

The path to those rare junctures is littered with brilliantly innovative prototypes that got really badly handled by young hotshots blinded by the stars - the dollar signs - too much, too soon, and ended their days as very expensive paperweights sitting on some miserable, ex-The-Next-IT-Big-Swinger's day trading desk. Management is the early stage key in every speculative venture but none more so than in this manic little corner of the marketplace. The maturity on display so far - on apparent display, anyway, since even sustained sincerity isn't really that hard to fake - is immensely reassuring. It renders the already-amply prospective FA backstory heftier by the day.

If I were prone to idle fantasizing I'd muse out loud (like one or two much older hands have) that maybe there's an offer been plonked down, or at least the reasonable prospect of one materializing. And the dudes have suddenly got some fork-in-the-road contemplating to do. But this is a spec play already so the last thing it needs is more fluff and froth based on no more than wishful thinking, from someone who's held for all of about two minutes.