July 29 Biotech Update

The news is slowing down a little this week but the earnings continue for the large caps. So far as a group the earnings look good indicating solid fundamentals with the companies. The stocks have been reacting well and the sector has been moving higher and outperforming. This move higher raises the bar for the […]

July 28 Biotech Update

It is a mixed bag today in terms of stock reactions but the actual numbers continue to be good. I am not exactly sure why some stocks are reacting better than others but I will take a stab at it. In any case, it is hard to argue that the fundamentals of the sector do […]

July 27 Biotech Update

We are in the midst of a busy week but we have a slight pause in the news but will pick up soon enough. The sector held up amazingly well considering the GILD and CELG news, which is certainly positive. It looks like positive news can still be rewarded and negative news is not automatically […]

July 26 Biotech Update

We got a double barrel of bad news after the close last night but I must say the overall sector reaction is good. I have said this before but it bears repeating. If this had happened a couple months ago the sector would be down 5%+ and stay down. Today we are green. It seems […]

July 25 Biotech Update

It is a slow start to what will end up being a very busy week of large cap earnings. We have a large cap reporting every day and it will be started with GILD after the bell. We have had good price action so far that has correlated with a strong set of earnings. Of […]

July 22 Biotech Update

Not a lot of additional news today. The sector continues to modestly outperform the broad market, which is good. The XBI crossed over the 200 day moving average (and actually closed above it) and the longer it can remain there the better. It would be great to see that moving average tested and hold as […]

July 21 Biotech Update

Finally we get some news for the sector and it is good news. Yesterday was a good day and the news so far today only builds on that move. Perhaps this is going to be enough to break the sector out of its range but that remains to be seen. At the very least it […]

July 20 Biotech Update

So the sector might actually be outperforming the market today but it is early. What is nice is that the positive news continues to be rewarded, which means our holdings only need to follow through on their catalysts to get a nice return. This is very different than earlier in the year where positive news […]

July 19 Biotech Update

More of the same yesterday and still not a ton of news for this morning. The market is overbought even if the sector is still not anywhere near over bought or all-time highs. That makes one worry a little about what happens to the sector when the market inevitably works off the overbought condition but […]

July 18 Biotech Update

Looking around there is really not a ton of sector news. The market is flat which could be considered a win given the Turkey coup attempt Friday but in terms of sector moving data or events, there is really nothing going on. It is a little interesting that we have had a dearth of mergers […]

July 15 Biotech Update

There is nothing new in the market or the sector, so I suspect we see more of the same. The sector continues to track the broader market but is clearly the weaker of the two. Until we get news we are going to be stuck in this pattern but on the bright side this likely […]

July 14 Biotech Update

The market continues to ramp higher but about halfway through yesterday the bottom fell out of the biotech sector and it has been struggling ever since despite the strength in the broader markets. It is not immediately clear what was the cause (seems temporally to correlate with Andrew Left noting that he is short VRX […]

July 13 Biotech Update

The market continued its strength (even if we dipped red for a second today). If you remember in the lead up to the BREXT vote the cash balance sheets for institutional investors were very high. With the market running after BREXIT you are getting buying panics as the buying dips have not appeared. In addition, […]

July 12 Biotech Update

The market and sector continue to do well. At least in terms of the macro market, we are back in the pattern where the most likely path of a market making new highs is to make marginal new highs. Obviously the biotech sector is not in that pattern even if we are moving with the […]

July 11 Biotech Update

I go on vacation and the sector does well and when I come back it is OK but not great. I hope this is not telling me something. In any case, it appears that the sector once again held at support but has not quite broken out of its range. With the market making all-time […]

July 1 Biotech Update

Yesterday was not a disaster but it was some kind of underperformance. Even as we got essentially a buyers panic at the end of the day, it still left many biotechs red. So on the good side, we did not break down but on the bad side it shows the utter lack of interest in […]

June 30 Biotech Update

More of the relief rally in the markets and to a certain extent the sector. As has been the case with most of the rallies in the sector, the trading desks are calling it a short covering rally more than long only money being put to work. As I have been saying in response is […]

June 29 Biotech Update

Brexit fears are turning into Brexit relief as I talked about Monday but there is still awhile to go before the damage to the market and sector are fixed and we probably need to go over the pre-Brexit levels before getting more comfortable. In any case, there is some interesting biotech news to talk about. […]

June 27 Biotech Update

Brexit, Brexit, and more Brexit. Commentary from this weekend ranged from the end of humanity as we know it to everything will be fine. Clearly someone is going to nail the impact (given that every type of impact has been talked about). The fact is we do not know and cannot even start to gauge […]

June 24 Biotech Update

Nothing from the sector but the news is certainly the Brexit results. I am not well versed in all the nuances of what it means for the EU (no one is as there is now a two year negotiation process that will determine exactly what a Brexit means and how it will be done) but […]