Monsanto - At What Point Is "Patience" The Same As Stubborness

Well, here's a shocker ... Monsanto (NYSE: MON) is down again.

I swear, this stock spends more time in the toilet than your average Hollywood celebutard.

The cause d'jour is early signs that the company's SmartStax product is not leading to the level of crop yield that the company promised. If true, that will force the company to make good on guarantees (hurting earnings) and it will make them look like jackasses (again) in the face of real improvement at DuPont (NYSE: DD).

I've preached patience before on this one, but I have to say that my patience is waning. True, this is only an early report on yields and there are plenty of crops still to come in. It is not unreasonable to think (hope?) that the trend could reverse and Monsanto could come out of this looking a little better. But then, that's just the sort of excuse-making that you do when you're stuck in a loser-stock.

I'm not selling Monsanto ... yet. I still believe in the long-term thesis and I still think the company's R&D is worth quite a lot. But I have to admit, it is getting harder and harder to hold this one ...

Disclosure - I own shares of Monsanto ... but I think I'd rather own a case of herpes at this point.