December 20 Biotech Update

Well, this has been a strangely interesting day for the week before Christmas. I thought the bulk of news was done but I clearly spoke too soon. There is some good news for the sector as well as some good-well-maybe-bad-let-us-argue news. I am going to go through these as sort of quick hits as none […]

December 19 Biotech Update

We are winding down and gearing up. The year is winding down so the news flow seems to be drying up but we are starting to gear up with 2017 predictions and JPM. Perhaps tax loss selling is slowing but I still think that might be the biggest headwind into the end of the year […]

December 16 Biotech Update

I am back from jury duty and will try and catch up on the events of this week but will continue that next week before the holiday break. The trading in the sector seems to have been volatile in that there seems to have been no real movement but some twists and turns to get […]

December 8 Biotech Update

So the sector seems to be moving beyond the Trump Tantrum if only slowly. It sort of helps that we have something else to obsess and argue about with Alzheimer’s data. While we have years before the BIIB phase III data and nothing has been settled, it is important data worth a focus for today. […]

December 7 Biotech Update

Here we go again. Just when you thought we could focus on fundamentals we have to talk about politics and politicians again. There was apparently an interview where Trump talked about tackling drug prices but the fact is there is nothing he can do alone. The republicans still control congress and it seems unlikely that […]

December 6 Biotech Update

It was a good day for most of the sector and ASH names except the ones I seemed to own. In any case, it was good to see the sector respond positively to ASH in general despite the odd reaction in a couple of names. I will continue with my ASH related reports today. 1. […]

December 5 Biotech Update

ASH has more or less come and gone. This is usually a highly anticipated conference that has some game changing data. While this was once again highly anticipated, I have been saying for weeks that this is an ASH of incremental as opposed to thesis changing data. A lot of the interesting data were updates […]

December 2 Biotech Update

ASH starts soon and the sector needs some more positive news as it is really starting to lag. Outside of the initial election pop it has been pretty bad in terms of relative performance. To be fair, the news outside of the election has been failures and secondaries. Obviously the sector needs more than the […]

November 30 Biotech Update

We are in a lull before a flood of data arrives at the end of this week and then into ASH next week. There is not a lot of new but we did have some interesting moves yesterday that are worth talking about. 1. I have already talked about the BLUE/CELG BCMA CART data that […]

November 29 Biotech Update

It seems like the election move is taking a time out and some consolidation is happening. That is not surprising given the move and (at least for the sector) the news. Despite the pause, we are heading into a historically good period for the sector as well as a time of increased M&A activity. I […]

November 28 Biotech Update

I vaguely (not really vaguely) recall noting last Tuesday that we were likely done with news unless some company wanted to sneak bad news in right before the holiday. I was correct but wrong. We had two majors pieces of negative news (LLY and JUNO) and surprisingly the sector managed to hold up relatively well […]

November 22 Biotech Update

More of the same in terms of slow news and likely decreasing volumes into the weekend. We do have a couple pieces of fundamental news to talk about but nothing groundbreaking in its importance. 1. The most meaningful is the removal of the partial clinical hold of the head and neck combo trials for AZN. […]

November 21 Biotech Update

An exciting return to the sector for me and I mean that sarcastically. Not really much to talk about heading into this Thanksgiving week and I would not be surprised if the only news we see this week is from companies trying to sneak out bad news. Volume should be low with drifting price action […]

November 16 Biotech Update

Again we do not have a ton of news but we had one of our first year end catalysts, which I will talk about. In terms of the year end catalysts, this one is pretty low on the list of importance but it was certainly one we were watching. 1. MDCO released their data at […]

November 15 Biotech Update

The initial move from the election seems long in the legs and perhaps is ready to pause. We have seen a couple of companies do secondaries, which is a perfectly rational and reasonable response. It has been an awful environment to raise cash, so many need cash and this is a nice time to refill […]

November 14 Biotech Update

And we continue with the Trump effect in the sector. As I noted before this is going to be a longer term tailwind despite what people argue about the potential transitory nature. Yes, we will not go straight up and yes it is not 100% positive forever but this is a sector that has grossly […]

November 11 Biotech Update

The sector momentum continued and there is no reason to expect it will end soon. Of course, nothing goes straight up but as I noted before there are numerous tailwinds and if we can hit on the year end catalysts, then it could actually accelerate higher in the next couple months. So what could be […]

November 9 Biotech Update

There is not a lot of stock specific news but I want to spend some time today talking about the election results and its implications and then starting Friday I will move to talking about upcoming catalysts for the sector. The election results were clearly outside of expectations and not only did we not have […]

November 8 Biotech Update

This is going to be a very interesting test for the sector. There are two events that should crush the sector (or would have recently) but will it? Odds are Clinton will be elected President and we just had a slew of awful earnings and negative news. If we can hold up in the face […]

November 7 Biotech Update

Welcome to election week and stock performance across the board are going to be highly correlated. I suspect the move today is the pricing in of an increased probability of a Clinton victory. At this point, my expected outcome is a Clinton victory, Republicans hold the house, and the Senate is all but split up […]