July 30th- EOD

While today seemed to have better trading action, the news was actually less interesting than Monday. There are a couple of notes but nothing quite significant. In fact, the most interesting news was in the commodities space with the Potash oligopoly seemingly about to collapse but hard to spin that into biotech. CEMP reports after […]

July 29- EOD

We finally had a major biotech merger but it was not one that got people excited as volumes and price action in biotech were neutral to negative for most of the day. Despite the lack of enthusiasm this was actually a pretty interesting day from the news front, so I will quickly touch on a […]

Week’s Option Activity (7/23~7/27)

The following stocks had notable activity in their options during the past week: $XOMA (7/23): 2,000 SEP/OCT 5.0 strike Call Time spreads (stock at $5.08) were bought for 0.35 or $70,000 net debit. The SEP 5.0 strike Calls were sold for 0.60 ($120,000 proceeds) and the SEP 5.0 strike Calls were bought for 0.95 ($190,000 […]

July 26-EOD

It was a relatively quiet day on the news front outside of the hep-C space where there as some news on both VRTX and GILD. Not much happening in the afternoon, so wrapping it up a little early. 1. VRTX announced that the FDA put a clinical hold on their all oral trial using VX-135. […]

July 25- EOD

We had a lot of large cap biotech news in terms of the earnings and I wanted to focus on two of them as both had clean beats but also gave some investors pause: CELG and BIIB. 1. BIIB absolutely blew out BG-12 sales. The sell side consensus was $70M and the buyside whisper was […]

July 24- EOD

The news du jour today was SRPT and I want to focus today’s note entirely on it because there is a lot to talk about. In addition, I want to focus on the bearish aspects to the story as I think the bullish case has been fairly well laid out. I would certainly not interpret […]

July 23- EOD

We still seem to be in a period of low news flow in terms of biotech stocks, which is fine as it gives me a chance to catch up on some longer term stories. In particular, I want to spend some time talking about ONTX as it should start trading Thursday and it is an […]

July 22- EOD

It is more of the same in that the market is a little quiet on news. I expected that there would be something interesting to talk about today but not so much. That being said there are a couple of items that I think might be important to note. 1. There has been a lot […]

Week’s Option Activity (7/15~7/19)

The following stocks had notable activity in their options during the past week: $NEPT (7/16): 16,000 (separated into trades of 6,000 and 10,000) AUG 4.0 strike Calls (stock at $3.71) were sold for 0.20 or total proceeds of $320,000. This trade is most likely a covered Call trade of an existing long stock position. $BCRX […]

STML – Follow up on Stemline

In what is becoming increasingly rare these last few months, Stemline made its public debut this January with a drug on track for late stage studies. The company focuses on cancer stem cells, with the clinical candidates SL-401 and SL-701. Today, we will delve into the former, a drug targeted to the IL-3 receptor. Read […]

July 19- EOD

Really seemed like a quiet summer day to end the week. Not much to talk about but a couple of follow up notes from earlier discussions. 1. To continue from my MYGN notes from yesterday, it was confirmed from LH that they will be in the BRCA market. This just builds on the bear case […]

July 18- EOD

Not a ton of news today, so this will be a little bit of a short update but some company specific news with CELG. Outside of that there was the IPO mania that might very well be peaking. I am not convinced that we are in a complete bubble simply because everyone is calling it […]

July 17- EOD

Well, we finally had a biotech merger but not any of the ones we expected. Outside of the small cap buyout, there was not a lot new today. 1. SPPI bought TLON this morning. What is really odd was that I almost wrote about SPPI yesterday but decided against it. When I was thinking about […]

July 16- EOD

Seemed like a slow news day as the markets pulled back to consolidate some of the recent moves. Biotechs were not immune to the move, although some clearly performed better than others. 1. EPZM has shown incredible strength since the IPO. While I like this company’s technology and would like to own some shares, it […]

July 15- EOD

Well, there was not a lot of news out there in biotech land but oddly there is a lot I want to talk about and will work through it over the next couple of days. 1. ARIA Iclusig prescriptions came in weak again with new prescriptions down 26% and only a 9% gain in continuing […]

Week’s Option Activity (7/8~7/12)

The following stocks had notable activity in their options during the past week: $CLDX (7/8): 1,000 AUG 22.0 strike Calls (stock at $21.27) were sold at 1.10 for total proceeds of $110,000. Seller makes money as long as stock trades less than $23.10 by August expiration. This trade is most likely paired with an equivalent […]

July 12- EOD

There have been a couple days of biotech buying, especially it seems in the small cap antibiotic space. Outside of the general performance, there has been some significant news. All in all a couple of interesting days. 1. I was tempted to write a quick update yesterday about the CELG MM-020 results but did not […]