No matter what you think you know, you do not know

No matter what you think you know, you do not know what effect CGM will have on diabetes monitoring an hour from now, let alone years from now any more than you can predict the stock price of DECN.

A couple of things. First is that I was brought out of retirement, after 42 years with one of the Big 4 in diabetic test strips, to manage a program at a well known Japanese manufacturer and R&D operation in CGM. My former employer manufactured their test strips and meters in Japan for 40 years so I was easy to hire since not many other companies manufactured in Japan. I still do this post-retirement job today and just recently extended my contract, so my Japanese company must think I am ok at what I do.

CGM is a huge uphill battle because the glucose determination, any time anywhere, approximates the finger stick level of technology in 2001. Convenience ain't everything. Also, Medicare deals with CGM technology on a case by case basis. This is not so in the finger-stick arena where once FDA clearance is achieved, Medicare pays no questions asked.

Second, I just do not understand penny stock traders. For some reason they want everyone to know how smart and learned they are. Some who post on message boards masquerade as experts in the field they are lying about, but when put to the test they resort to stock trader arguments. If you owned shares in Dexcom or Abbott and read their periodic reports and news releases, that does not make you an expert in CGM. It makes you a shareholder or former shareholder.

The diabetic test strip industry worldwide is over $15 billion. There are approximately 16 million people testing themselves. There are less than 25,000 CGM users. CGM is not new technology even if the TV commercials for CGM companies are new. 25,000 users after 5 years is not a great track record. But hey, who am I to say so. I am not a penny trader and I don't know everything, and so my opinion is worthless.

$15 billion industries do not just disappear even in the make believe world many penny traders live in. In fact, there is ample evidence that non-name brand companies and products have a renaissance once the old guard pulls up or pulls out. That's what J&J did. So DECN, if they can be funded, and it appears they will be if you read between the lines in today's news release, will do well. They have a better mouse trap. The mouse trap is applicable to more than one test strip technology, at least in the current arena. And this is exactly the time in technology life cycles when a DECN like technology can elbow into markets and take Tyrannosaurus sized bites out of a market. But hey, let's think about giving all that up. I will remind you of something a friend of mine once told me when we were speaking about the adaptation of older technologies. "the wheel is old technology but it doesn't stop people from using it or finding new uses for it"

Now, if you really want to know where the explosive growth in the industry will reside, it will come when a test strip is designed to read a drop of liquid from a finger tip where there is no need for a needle stick. Drop a chemical on the finger tip and the chemical will do two things, first it will wash away all of the dirt and substances on the finger tip, and next it will draw the blood closer to the tip of the finger where it can be read by an extremely sensitive sensor (the test strip). You want to make an absolute fortune, complete design of that product and create a multi-billion $$ international bidding war.