April 24 Biotech Update

Some news to talk about today with interesting implications and I will try to cover most of them. The sector seems to be lagging early despite some business development news but we also had a big miss by BIIB that might be acting as a headwind (the M&A rumor seem to save the day so […]

April 14 Biotech Update

A weak start to the day that essentially appears to be a continuation from the late selling yesterday. It still seems to be the case that large caps are underperforming the SMID, which has been the case for awhile. I suspect that is going to be a difficult trend to break but for the long […]

April 9th Biotech Update

The market is choppy this morning so it is difficult to read anything into the price action. I am growing slightly more constructive on the near term of the sector but that is a very low conviction view. While the sector bounced on support, I have a hard time believing that the sell off was […]

March 31 Biotech Update

The sector was relatively weak yesterday and did not start this morning particular strong. I still am noticing the large cap lagging trend that has been going on for awhile. Is this simply a function of the lack of near term catalysts, increasing bearishness on the large caps, investors chasing returns lower on the capital […]

March 25 Biotech Update

A rough start to morning for the sector with a biotech bubble article in the WSJ not helping. There was nothing new but the headline is the headline (it also had some odd numbers like CELG P/E over 50, which is much higher than the numbers I usually see when calculating CELG P/E). Of course, […]

March 24 Biotech Update

Today seems to be a slow day, so I will try and keep it short and to the point. The sector held up better than I would have thought yesterday, although it was a clear underperformer. What seemed a little odd was that it was not GILD or BIIB leading the large caps lowers but […]

March 23 Biotech Update

A weak start to the week but it is also a continuation from the weak ending of last week. Everyone is waiting for a pullback. The bulls expect a moderate pullback to consolidate the move, the bears expect a more significant move to purge a lot of the excess valuation, and the bubble callers are […]

March 20 Biotech Update

I believe there was some sort of data that came out today that had people talking. LOL. The BIIB data neatly dovetailed into biotech valuation discussion and so I want to spend time talking about both the BIIB data and valuations. I want to try and separate them as while they are clearly linked, they […]

March 18 Biotech Update

Some early weakness but I also suspect today is going to be fairly volatile with the Fed weighing in later this afternoon. So I am really not going to read anything into the price action this morning and even less into the price action in the sector after the announcement. Given how close people think […]

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 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 […]

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 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 4 Biotech Update

A blah start to the trading day. There are not a particularly large numbers of movers and the market seems for the most part to be drifting. As such, it is difficult to discern any real trend outside of chop. So it seems like the market and sector are searching for a direction. I would […]

December 3 Biotech Update

It is a basically neutral day in the market but the sector seems a little weak but this is off of a good day yesterday. One problem to keep an eye on is that many of the stocks I follow start very strong but weaken throughout the day. I would certainly prefer to stop seeing […]

November 26 Biotech Update

The trading is winding down as we approach Thanksgiving and I suspect today is going to be slow and get slower. The market will be open again on Friday but will likely be even slower as many will likely take the half trading day off. I suspect this also means that news flow will also […]

October 22 Biotech Update

After a couple days of ripping higher the markets seemed to have calmed a little, which is understandable as this rip higher needs to be digested. The small caps tended to underperform the past couple days but it still might be a little too early to call it a trend and it could just be […]

July 28 Biotech Update

Earnings season is off to a good start with both a nice quarter from BIIB and the positive phase III data from PBYI. It is encouraging that good news is being rewarded but the key is going to be how well this spike maintains over the next days and weeks. Given the positive pin action […]

July 2 Biotech Update

A tough end to USA soccer in the World Cup but another good morning for biotech stocks. I have some follow up discussion from earlier this week as there is not a ton of new news this morning. I suspect that will be the case as we get closer to the long weekend (but we, […]