The sector and perhaps even broader market look good. One of my fears about the risk of a government shut down and/or debt ceiling might be resolving to a certain extent. There seems to be a growing consensus to do a three month funding, debt ceiling hike, and hurricane Harvey relief in a single bill. […]
June 6 Biotech Update
I am back from ASCO with a lot to cover and I will focus on broader themes today and spend the rest of the week with more company specific commentary. The reaction to ASCO so far has been bad but as I noted before that is not completely unexpected. The trading action before ASCO does […]
May 24 Biotech Update
The sector is having issues. If it is not in oversold conditions it certainly feels that way. Part of the issue is the traditional reasons to sell biotech but it is not as if these companies have been releasing stellar news recently. In any case, this seems to be creating decent opportunities. 1. First a […]
May 18 Biotech Update
I do not want to spend time on macro given the ASCO abstract dump. As I noted before there is usually not much that comes out of these abstracts as they are early cuts of smaller amounts of data than we will see at ASCO. So for the vast majority of companies the conclusion will […]
May 12 Biotech Update
The sector seems to be doing OK. The market appears oddly bifurcated again with the large caps generally underperforming but there are some nice moves in the SMID. This is perhaps the M&A bid coming back into the sector or perhaps is just a reflection that the large caps have little growth and weak pipelines […]
May 4 Biotech Update
It looks like a vote is set for TrumpCare in the House and while it will be close I lean towards it passing. Congress is heading towards a recess so I suspect many republicans are going to vote to give Trump a win. It is a low cost vote as it will not pass the […]
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 […]
April 3 Biotech Update
AACR is in full swing with a couple more days worth of data coming but so far there has not been anything thesis changing to the upside or downside. To be fair, we have more data expected in the next couple days but as I noted previously this tends to be an earlier stage conference. […]
March 22 Biotech Update
We finally had a 1%+ down day in the market, so we can finally stop seeing on the tweets about how long it has been since a 1% sell off. This broader market weakness led to sector weakness- not surprisingly. Of course, this is right after Trump made another comment on drug pricing, so this […]
March 13 Biotech Update
Certainly getting some more news and events that could be driving the sector but nothing really thesis changing, we need to wait for the end of the week with the PCSK9 data. As we wait for that data, there are some interesting notes and company specific information that we can talk about. 1. KPTI was […]
February 17 Biotech Update
Some news to talk about today in a couple stocks and one idea I want to float that has been ruminating in my mind. The sector continues to do well as is the market in general. There has been some talk that the melt up is related to a massive synthetic short position in the […]
February 14 Biotech Update
Some decent news this morning for the sector but not quite a robust reaction. Perhaps the sector needs to pause after its recent run or perhaps it will rally later but I would have expected a little more follow through. It is still early and regardless of the price action the sector needs to continue […]
January 9 Biotech Update
I am getting ready to head out to JPM but I wanted to have a quick JPM note this morning. In general, the news has been a little slow as compared to expectations but certainly bullish. I will highlight a couple of the more important stories. 1. We have almost $6B in deals in one […]
January 5 Biotech Update
News is starting to pick up as we approach JPM. This should continue through the weekend. There has not really been anything dramatic today as these early birds tend to be companies that would be overwhelmed by the bigger announcements expected closer to JPM. All in all, the net-net of news this morning has been […]
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 14 Biotech Update
And we continue with the Trump effect in the sector. As I noted before this is going to be a longer term tailwind despite what people argue about the potential transitory nature. Yes, we will not go straight up and yes it is not 100% positive forever but this is a sector that has grossly […]
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 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 […]
September 28 Biotech Update
The sector continues to do well but there seems to be a bifurcation occurring where the SMID are outperforming the large caps. Usually when investors come back into a sector they start higher on the capital scale as those are typically cash flow positive, reasonable valuations, and a safer way to increase exposure. This does […]
August 22 Biotech Update
The sector is doing well on the consummation of the long courtship of MDVN. I will be back with my commentary this week but am still not quite back to the usual routine. The kids still do not have school, so these will be shorter than usual this week but next week when everything is […]
