key words from page 21, page-12

dbl21,

You say:

"Here we go again with the aint seen nothing yet.
Yep you are all right, we havent seen anything yet !"

I don't mean to be rude but if you haven't seen anything yet as you exclaim then either you have a short memory, haven't looked at the actual progress or simply haven't been around this stock very long. Not a criticism, just an observation. I'm not sure who "we" is but if its the royal "we" then probably better not to speak for the rest of us because many of us have seen loads over the last 2 years.

2 years ago SSN was debt laden, cash poor and preparing to put their hand out for more, had hardly any producing wells and loads of land doing nothing, with no means to develop it.

Today SSN has no debt, a luxurious cash position, a growing list of producing wells, an above average strike rate, partners working with them to develop multiple fields, a major new field to spread the eggs, and a rapidly increasing oil price.

Now I know the definition of seeing something for many people is limited to the content of a price chart so lets look at that for signs of progress.

Have a look at where we were at the beginning of 2010. The market valued SSN FF shares back then at 1.2c. Now in early 2012 the market values those same shares at 11.5c. Thats an increase in the SP of about 860%. The options have increase from 0.5c to 9.8c over the same period, which is 1860% higher over the 2 year period. Not bad huh ?

Now sure there was a time when speculators drove the SP up to silly levels which couldn't be supported by fundamentals and those prices couldn't hold at the time. I don't however think that artificial highs negate actual progress and the fact that the stock has found support at more than 9 times its price of two years earlier is surely quite a significant achievement, rose coloured glasses or not.

I'm sure that anybody who decided that the huge overall market rally in the first half of 2011 was a good time to take their inaugrial stake in SSN will see things differently because their view of progress will be significantly shorter. More specifically anybody who brough into and created that spike on March 8 last year must have had rocks in their head and will be feeling that they were sold a lemon, but really have a look at that spike and tell me that anybody who brought after an 1816% rally wasn't taking a big risk.

Despite this, even a cursory glance at the price chart shows wild fluctulations based on events in the US (debt ceiling arguments), Europe (half the continent doesn't want to repay their loans), China (so many supposed bubbles that they appear to be foaming at the mouth), Iran (nuclear ambitions), etc which impacted the overall market, the price of oil etc.

How much of SSNs price chart reflects the overall progress of the company? Well I'd suggest that if you are looking at the daily movements, intraday movements, even the weekly movements then you generally can't extrapolate company performance from overall market and other macroeconomic factors. This is why the longer term trend is important. I'm not chartist as all the chartists will happily attest but I've managed to draw upon my considerable kindergarten skills and drawn a green line on the chart to make the trend more obvious.

2 years ago SSN management did a deal that was the beginning of a path to transform the company and create shareholder value. We are a long way from the destination but on almost every level I think the progress is significant. SSNs potential is still huge and with so much activity 2012 may well bring enough good news on fundamentals that SSNs SP finds support at much higher prices, with or without the bots. Unsupported peaks will no doubt happen again in the excitment and some will get caught paying top dollar but their decisions as to how much to pay won't in any way, shape or form detract from the real tangible progress or the profits made by those whose investment horrizons are longer than a few months.

Disclosure: Sadly my average buy price is not that used for the purpose of the 2 year SP performance examples provided above. I will admit that I wish it was.