November 4 Biotech Update

There has been nothing reasonable, rational, or predictable about the price action in the sector recently. The sell off yesterday on the ASH abstracts (supposedly the catalyst) is the height of irrational. This is not to say that there was no relevant data but 90%+ of the abstract data were either not new or not […]

November 2 Biotech Update

Any selling we see today cannot really be blamed on sentiment or the elections as we had our first day (in my opinion) of fundamentally bad earnings. Up to this point, it seems that the earnings were in-line to better than expectations but certainly not perfect. This is not the case for the big earnings […]

November 1 Biotech Update

We have more of the same with basically solid fundamental reports but certainly not perfect and I suspect it will lead to another day lower with the outperformer that will likely fade tomorrow. Despite heading into earnings season with low expectations, awful sentiment, and a large sell off, the market has chosen to focus on […]

October 31 Biotech Update

There is nothing that seems to help the sector. The clear sentiment headwind is the election and that is certainly plausible. A non-democratic sweep of the presidency, senate, and house should be good for the sector. Of course, everyone expects that so usually when everyone expects something the market does not act in that way. […]

October 28 Biotech Update

A week into earnings season and while it is not perfect, it is clearly better than the fears going in and the price action indicated. No company has really missed in a big way. A fair number of companies beat and raised and you had some positive clinical news sprinkled in. That being said the […]

October 26 Biotech Update

It looks like the sector is not responding well to decent news. As I noted yesterday nothing has had a perfect press release but given the selloff perfect news was clearly not priced in. To be clear, there is some positive price action on positive news but it seems very isolated and very susceptible to […]

October 25 Biotech Update

Earnings have started and so far nothing great but nothing horrible. In fact there were some notable misses but we may be at the point that misses will rally stocks given how low expectations have fallen. So not only do we need to pay attention to what the earnings say about the fundamentals of the […]

October 24 Biotech Update

We have almost a perfect storm of negativity to hit the sector to start the week- a week that people were already worried about with the slew of earnings that will be coming. There are a plethora of major mergers throughout the market but none in biotech. The M&A thesis has been a core to […]

October 21 Biotech Update

Clearly the sector did not turn the corner after the presidential debate even though it should have assuaged concerns over the importance of drug pricing to the candidates. The sector had a small recovery and with the positive news released last night, this should have been a nice tailwind. Any sort of early pop has […]

October 19 Biotech Update

There is really nothing to talk about today with a lack of news. I suspect we will be weak into the final debate and stretch run of the campaign. Recent polls are showing the potential of a wave election which would at the very least give the democrats the Senate with an increasing chance of […]

October 18 Biotech Update

It is still not great out there for the sector but yesterday was not awful, which I guess is an improvement. Perhaps we have reached a short term bottom and whether this is a longer term bottom I think depends on how comfortable investors are about the election. We clearly built in some expectation for […]

October 17 Biotech Update

The sector continues to weaken but still remains above the 200 day moving average. It seems to me that some panic is starting to set in as the sector cannot slow the bleeding. The selling appears to be relentless with nothing acting as support. As long as we stay above the 200 day, I am […]

October 14 Biotech Update

The sector may be due for a snap back (with the broader market) but I still get the sense that people are worried. My prevailing thought has been that this was related to both earnings jitters and a set of negative data. I still think those are a factor but I also wonder if the […]

October 12 Biotech Update

It looks like fears are starting to take hold in the sector. I suspect it is centered on revenues coming up short and this then causes everyone to focus on the bad news that hits the tape. As I said before, I do think earnings will be weak for some large caps and this will […]

October 11 Biotech Update

Looks like we are going to move from good to bad with earnings warnings likely to weigh on the sector today. I think there was always some concern about earnings heading into the upcoming reports and this has only been exacerbated today. 1. In terms of the earnings warnings that came out (ILMN and HZNP), […]

October 10 Biotech Update

It is a solid positive reaction to ESMO across the sector (with some notable exceptions). While there are number of potential topics, I want to focus on one as it has very broad implications that we need to watch not just in the near term but longer term. 1. BMY front line data were an […]

October 7 Biotech Update

There have been some interesting moves and news since Wednesday but even looking at the sector today, the volumes seem a little weak in most names. As such, there are some moves that seem meaningful in individual names with high volume but I am not reading any of those moves (or the other low volume […]

October 5 Biotech Update

I think the word of the week is drift. Sure there were some moves within the markets or sector but for the most part this is a low volume drift. We are closing in on a month from Election Day, so I suspect nobody wants to commit a lot of capital ahead of the election. […]

October 4 Biotech Update

Today is certainly a better start. It seems that the sector is trading to a certain extent on macro issues with the DB concerns leading to risk on versus risk off action. The sector will always be a victim to large risk off moves, so if the DB situation resolves I would not be surprised […]

October 3 Biotech Update

Not the best start to the week for the market or sector but there really seems to be little conviction on this move. So we meander lower and the sector moves with the broader market. I think the market it getting closer to its next big move as we are closing in on four months […]