We had a nice little correction yesterday but while it was certainly a meaningful move compared to recent price action, it did not really remove any of the real fluff in the sector. That being said it could be enough to reset the “over bought” conditions and lead to a continuation of the rally. While […]
January 30 Biotech Update
The sector remains strong. The market has weakened a little but the sector was still holding on. If the broader market weakness continues, it will eventually drag down the sector but that has not happened yet. Of course, a bit of a pullback is well overdue and will happen eventually but the trigger and timing […]
January 26 Biotech Update
The market is relentless. Just as it is important to buy when the market seems to be going down forever, it is also important to sell on these sort of rips higher. The selling at the high levels is always more difficult for me, so I want to spend some time today talking about potential […]
January 25 Biotech Update
We are getting some biotech earnings but nothing that is dramatically thesis changing. We had a little consolidation yesterday and I would not be surprised to see it continue but the trend remains higher and suspect that we break into new highs in the first quarter (assuming at least a benign general market environment). 1. […]
October 11 Biotech Update
More of the same. The sector seems to be content to drift on low volume, which is pretty consistent with the broader market and the lack of fundamental news. Odds are this is the calm before the storm with the most likely set of news coming from earnings but even that should not be completely […]
September 15 Biotech Update
It still looks to me that the sector is acting less like a sector and more like an aggregation of individual stocks. That is always true (it is not a stock market but a market of stocks) but usually there is a rising (or lowering) tide that raises (or lowers) all boats effect. I find […]
July 7 Biotech Update
The sector seems to be consolidating its previous move although the broader market does not necessarily look that strong. That being said the trend for the sector is higher and outperformance at least in the recent past. I still expect it to test the breakout level at which point everyone will be expecting the levels […]
June 22 Biotech Update
The sector continues to rocket higher as clearly sentiment has reversed. This run likely has more legs than anyone thinks. The sector has been in a massive bear market and churned sideways for about 18 months. We were barely 5% above the upper end of the range and I saw comments about the sector looking […]
May 30 Biotech Update
It is ASCO week and the end of a long Memorial Day weekend and there is no news. Usually heading into long weekends there is the expectation/hope that a deal can be finished. Unsurprisingly there are no deals but perhaps a little surprising last week ended with no real excitement or talk of a deal. […]
April 17 Biotech Update
Another long weekend and another lack of M&A. I do not know when this will start to weigh on the sector or the reason behind the lack of M&A but it will matter at some point. Perhaps it is valuation, perhaps it is waiting on tax reform but at some point companies need pipeline as […]
February 10 Biotech Update
So I think we need to be prepared for some more backlash and bad press given the decision by Marathon to think it is business as usual. So far the backlash has been isolated but it is difficult to see this not become a political talking point. 1. Marathon licensed an old, generic steroid (DFZ) […]
September 23 Biotech Update
The sector seems to be quieting down a little and perhaps a little bit of consolidation of the recent move is in the cards. All in all, however, it seems like a productive week for the sector and confirms my base case that the likely path moving forward is higher (with the obvious pullbacks sprinkle […]
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 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 […]
June 14 Biotech Update
The sector continues to struggle but for some reason we seem to be getting a bounce today despite a set of fairly negative news. It obviously remains to be seen if this bounce can have any sort of staying power but it is certainly not driven by positive news. 1. I want to actually take […]
June 6 Biotech Update
It’s the Monday after ASCO started and it is time to declare the winners and losers. Even when we have definitive data this is often a less than precise undertaking and this is especially the case this year when the data are early and incremental. So I will spend today talking about why the consensus […]
June 3 Biotech Update
Not much in terms of news to end the week as we head into ASCO. The jobs report may make this a macro day sell off (although if you dig into the jobs report the big miss seems to be driven entirely by the Verizon strike, so when that ends this should completely reverse). In […]
June 2 Biotech Update
I missed a day but not much happened. The sector continues to do well and it seems to be slowly turning sentiment around. The one negative (or perhaps positive) is that the ISI traders noted that there is still not buying demand and the move seems to be driven by a lack of sellers and […]
May 27 Biotech Update
Yesterday was not a great day but after the run having a treading water sort of trading is not the worst outcome. At the worst, we were trading in line with the market and the key will be what we do after the recent move has been digested. The trend has been higher, so the […]
May 18 Biotech Update
The sector remains in a precarious position, which is nothing new. ISI had a call yesterday with its technician and the overwhelming view on most of the stocks was that they are at a decision point- the short term chart does not look great but they are at long term support. He tended to lean […]
