Another day with no clear leadership in the space but with a general bid to the sector (until the entire market sold off). I am a little surprised at how long this has lasted but to be fair the sector continues to move higher without clear leadership. What do I mean by the lack of […]
January 27 Biotech Update
A bad start for the market in terms of earnings, economic data, and price action. It appears that FX and the capital spending decline coming from oil prices is creating a significant headwind. Despite the gap down, biotechs were basically unchanged if not higher. That is quite the odd scenario as risk off should hit […]
January 26 Biotech Update
It has been a mixed start to the week both in terms of the macro background and also stocks within the sector. It seems like both are looking for new leadership (to the upside or downside) and I still lean towards the next move being higher but it remains a low conviction view. On the […]
January 23 Biotech Update
It has been sort of a mixed bag with the sector despite some decent macro tailwinds with the European QE program. I am not saying the sector has been bad but I would have expected it to take more of a leadership position in the move higher whereas it seemed more to have been dragged […]
January 21 Biotech Update
The markets recovered nicely yesterday and there seems to be some slight follow through today with the rumor that the ECB is going to do 50B Euro/month QE. That would be on the low end of the “surprise” estimates and I am not sure how that would be perceived. Ultimately I expect some volatility and […]
January 20 Biotech Update
Not the way you want to start the week with the sector going down with the rest of the market after a weak gap higher. Even more problematic is the severe weakness in the high flying momentum stocks like KITE and BLUE. The fact that these are underperforming can be read as an early warning […]
January 16 Biotech Update
Well, this morning started a little better but I am much more interested in how the market ends as we were due for at least a short term bounce. Ironically, the new focus on the Swiss currency has removed it from oil which is doing well (perhaps investors burned by the Swiss need to cover […]
January 15 Biotech Update
I am back from JPM and will be highlighting what I learned over the next couple of days. I do want to reinforce what I was noting before and that is this market action speaks of a black swan coming. The quick drop in oil put a lot of pressure on positions. The action with […]
January 9 Biotech Update
A weak start to the day but there seemed to be a lot of volatility, so it is hard to get a sense of exactly where the market wants to go. I suspect the early pressure is lower but a late day rally would signal that bulls are once again in charge- meaning that the […]
January 8 Biotech Update
A great continuation for the markets but I do not see a lot of great action in the biotech sector. We spiked higher but those original moves have not held and we seem to be retracing the gaps. If those gaps in the sector cannot hold with the markets running, then that is certainly an […]
January 7 Biotech Update
A much better market today than the past couple of days. Over the near term I suspect the market is set up for a fairly significant bounce. Of course, the normal caveats all apply and we need to see follow through this afternoon but my base case is a nice recovery for the market which […]
January 6 Biotech Update
A good start to the day with the market slightly higher but as always we need to see how they end as yesterday was a rough day and odds are more selling is on its way. That being said the sector held up exceptionally well and was a clear outperformer. I suspect the excitement heading […]
January 5 Biotech Update
It was a little more quiet on the news front than I would have expected but still some positive news to discuss as well as provide some color on my 2015 small cap views. I am going to use both CEMP and CNAT to start the discussion as they highlight a couple of interesting points […]
January 2 Biotech Update
It is a good start to the New Year and it is only a matter of time until we start seeing facts talking about years in which the market opened higher end positive X% of the time. In any case, it is nice to see a positive start to the year and it will be […]
December 30 Biotech Update
A drifting day in the market but with a negative bias to start. It is hard to read too much into the movement as the volume is low and there is little news out there. I am going to spend the next couple of notes previewing 2015 to a certain extent. I will start with […]
December 29 Biotech Update
The sector has recovered from the brutal sell off in no small part related to a recovery in GILD. As I noted last week, the sector needs GILD to stabilize/recover to move higher and so I am not surprised to see biotechs move higher in sympathy with GILD. Why is there such a relationship? GILD […]
December 23 Biotech Update
The sector is certainly having problems. As I noted yesterday, you should be biased towards raising cash (and going short if you are interested in running more of a market neutral book). Even ABBV who is the hep-C “winner” cannot catch a bid as the market is reasonably discounting not the fact that ABBV will […]
December 22 Biotech Update
It was a weak start to the sector and I suspect that may be a popular start to these notes as the sector seems to have lost some control of pricing power. I am going to spend today talking about the ABBV/ESRX deal as it has significant implications not over for the hep-C market but […]
December 19 Biotech Update
After a set of very strong rallies, it would probably be constructive for the market to trade sideways for a bit but the pressure for managers to chase may be too great as their benchmarks are that much higher after the recent rip. In any case, it was a relatively benign open to the market […]
December 18 Biotech Update
Another rally in the making as we are snapping back from the oversold conditions. It was only a matter of time for this snap but the bigger question is how the market builds upon it. Ideally, this gets the market to new highs with the worst case scenario being we put in a lower high. […]
