Top Takes From RealMoney

The RealMoney contributors are in the business of trading and investing all day on the basis of ongoing news flow. Below, we offer the top five ideas that RealMoney contributors posted today and how they played those ideas.

TheStreet.com brings you the news all day, and with RealMoney's "Columnist Conversation," you can see how the pros are playing it on a real-time basis. Here are the top five ideas played today. To see all that RealMoney offers, click here for a free trial.

1. Dendreon (DNDN) Testing Nine-Year Resistance
By Alan Farley
8:26 a.m. EDT

Dendreon (DNDN Quote) is grinding order out of chaos. This hot stock rallied into the upper $20s in 2000, 2007 and again in late April of this year. It then settled into the low $20s through May and is now ticking higher. It tested the rally high last Friday and pulled back for two sessions. A buy rating from Citigroup this morning has lifted price back to $26.40, which is just under last week's high.

A rally over nine-year resistance could trigger a major move that lifts price into the $40s in a relatively short time frame. It goes without saying, however, this is an extremely volatile stock. In other words, you can lose a fortune being on the wrong side of this trade.

Monthly and daily charts here.

No positions.

---

2. Anadarko
By Tom Graff
8:36 a.m. EDT

The new Anadarko (APC Quote) bonds are an interesting and important story. For months now, almost all new bond issues followed a defined pattern. The new issue would be announced and immediately all existing bonds would move 20 to 50 basis points wider. The new issue would sell to the public at that wider spread, then rapidly tighten back to where secondaries had been trading prior to the new issue announcement.

Anadarko didn't follow the pattern. Prior to the new deal, APC 8.7% due 2019 was trading around +330. The new 10-year APC's came at +325. No concession at all!

So you'd think the post-issue trading would be weak. The whole rationale for why new issues tightened in the secondary (namely the concession) wasn't there for APC buyers. Yet tighten it did. Now the new 2019s are bid at +290.

Just as interesting is that the old APC 19s, which should trade at the same level, isn't. It's bid more like +310. Why? Best excuse is that the old bonds have a much higher dollar price (around $111) because of the healthy 8.7% coupon. For no real good reason, some investors shy away from high priced bonds.

What's counterintuitive about that is that in a rising rate environment, high coupon bonds outperform, because you get more periodic cash which you can reinvest at higher rates. Lower coupon bonds will trade at a discount, meaning more of your yield is tied up in the eventual repayment of principal. So if anything, higher coupon bonds should be more valued, not less.

Long APC bonds.