Dave Trading – April 2017

*** David Sobek is a disciplined value investor.  Using models, research, and fundamental data, David devises a value for biotech stocks, buys when significantly undervalued, and sells when significantly overvalued.*** As a reminder, this is my personal guide.  You can alter it in accordance with your risk tolerance. >3 Standard deviations – No position 2-3 […]

March 10 Biotech Update

The sector has been interesting. Given the past 18 months, it feels easy to be bearish on every pullback consolidation but I am incrementally more positive. It is starting to feel more like a pause at an important level of resistance as opposed to the start of a large retracement. Obviously we likely need some […]

February 22 Biotech Update

A little bit of news since yesterday and I will focus on them but more broadly the sector seemed to struggle yesterday. It had been outperforming so a day of relative weakness is not unexpected but was certainly a sell biotech and buy everything else sort of day. Let us see if that pattern continues […]

February 3 Biotech Update

I was correct in my prediction that I would need to take care of a sick child (and still need to do so today but have some more time). It has been an interesting week but pretty much expected. I will circle around to what I saw as the most interesting and important events. 1. […]

January 30 Biotech Update

Volatility is the name of the game with the daily flow of disruptive executive orders coming out of Washington but despite this the VIX has been going down and the market in general has been holding up well. At some point this disconnect will correct and it will not be a simple gap down (or […]

January 6 Biotech Update

News continues to come in (both expected and unexpected) and the sector remains strong into JPM. Usually there is a tailwind JPM week that can last a little but eventually all the secondaries that come after JPM stall the momentum. Last year was obviously an exception to that pattern but it seems (at least so […]

December 26 Biotech Update

I hope that everyone is having a good holiday season. News has slowed to a crawl and I will start making the 2017 previews unless there is some breaking news. I will start with large caps and move down the capital structure. 1. My 2017 large cap biotech pick is CELG (surprise) but I am […]

November 21 Biotech Update

An exciting return to the sector for me and I mean that sarcastically. Not really much to talk about heading into this Thanksgiving week and I would not be surprised if the only news we see this week is from companies trying to sneak out bad news. Volume should be low with drifting price action […]

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 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 […]

September 27 Biotech Update

We got some interesting biotech news and I thought there would be only one to talk about but we have three I want to touch on so I will save general market commentary for another day as nothing has changed there. 1. The first news is the interim ZUMA-1 data that was reported by KITE. […]

September 19 Biotech Update

Another slow news start to the week. Without anything positive or negative to drive trading, I suspect we generally move with the market with perhaps some modest outperformance. The trend for the sector has been positive and there is nothing since Friday that should change that underlying tailwind. {Note that is what I wrote before […]

August 1 Biotech Update

Biotech is hot again. I know I may have just jinxed us but the sector continues to power higher even as the broader market spins its wheels. Obviously there will be pauses and consolidations but I suspect that the money flow that hurt us for so long is reversing and is now going to start […]

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 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 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 […]

June 23 Biotech Update

Nothing new (again) and the market is waiting on baited breath about the Brexit voting results. This should be the last major near term fear inducing event. The polls are too close to call but the betting markets seem pretty confident that the vote will be to remain. I expect today will be volatile but […]

June 8 Biotech Update

Yesterday was surprisingly good, although so far we have not really had a nice follow through to start today. That being said the rally started to pick up steam later in the day, so perhaps we will follow the same pattern. If we continue to trade well in lieu of the negative news yesterday, then […]