antibody, many thanks for your frank and mature response.(I...

antibody, many thanks for your frank and mature response.

(I clicked on the thing that gives you a thumbs up... not sure that it means anything to people.)

You are spot on: I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to MSB... which, self-evidently, is why I am here: to learn about the factors driving the share price.

By way of brief background, because I have never had the time over the past twenty or so years (full-on job and growing family) I have never been an active share investor. All I did was invest in the top large cap stocks (CBA, ANZ, TLS, CSL, WOW, WES; that sort of thing....a financial planner advised that was the way to go and he was right!).

The shares I own have done very well for me over the past 20 years, and have allowed me to retire early, which I am doing at the end of this financial year, and one of the things I want to do in retirement is become a more active investor.

I think most of the shares I own are expensive (I suspect; I don't know for sure, because I have thought that many times before and they've continued to go up), so I am looking to diversify into some higher-risk, higher return shares. As you say, higher-risk shares which have been heavily sold out, like MSB and other biotechs, or maybe some mining shares, such as AGO, or low-priced mining service companies, such as UGL.

So thanks for taking time to shed some light on some of the questions I was asking (for after all, that's what a forum like this is for, is it not?)

I have to admit that I'm still unclear on the role that market manipulators play, and I was interested to learn from people how manipulation had worked in a SPECIFIC mechanistic way in MSB's case (as opposed to Google-ing generic share price manipulation, which was what was suggested to me. I know in broad terms what share price manipulation is: I was just keen to hear from people how - in a practical sense, it had affected MSB). [I had never come across the subject of share price manipulation for a company like, say, CBA, so I am looking for tactile examples of where it is having a real effect, and specifically HOW it is occurring.]

As for shorters, my background in statistics (non-practising, mind you), makes me almost certain that short-selling has no impact on share prices other than over very short time frames. It, alone, certainly cannot explain MSB multi-year share price decline. Quantitatively, over a sufficient timeframe, short-selling and short-covering must neutralise one another. It's statistical axiomatic.

But your valuation insights have provided me with a very good distillation of where to focus my efforts in determining a valuation backing for the stock's $1.5bn of equity value. It's exactly the sort of starting point I was looking for, so thank you most kindly for that.

The milestone payments, in particular, are of interest so I will go away and do some work around those (I assume that, as their name suggests, they are to be paid to MSB at certain stages of clinical trials.)

I now have enough to go away and do some first principles modelling so I won't be bothering you again, hopefully.

Again, thanks for the pointers. I hope that I will one day also have sufficient knowledge on specific companies to be able to help newcomers in the way that you have guided me.

(For that is what a community notice board is all about, is it not? As opposed to: "I know stuff. You don't. So go away and work it out for yourself.")

cheers

Adam