We have some additional news yesterday but nothing that is necessarily positive for the sector. It certainly rallied in the afternoon and I suspect there is enough juice left for that to continue. Of course, we are only one tweet away from a pullback but I guess that is true of every sector and stock. […]
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 25 Biotech Update
Tomorrow is our big earning day (will not be able to write tomorrow so look for an update on the news Friday) but today we at least had a positive earnings with NVS. While I am sure there will be tradable extreme moves, the sector is going to continue to need positive earnings and data […]
January 24 Biotech Update
Still a slow start to the week especially for an earnings week. I will highlight a couple biotech points and one non-biotech. In terms of the non-biotech, I am becoming increasingly worried about the market in general. Keep in mind that one of the key advisors to Trump is Icahn who noted previously that the […]
December 16 Biotech Update
I am back from jury duty and will try and catch up on the events of this week but will continue that next week before the holiday break. The trading in the sector seems to have been volatile in that there seems to have been no real movement but some twists and turns to get […]
October 18 Biotech Update
It is still not great out there for the sector but yesterday was not awful, which I guess is an improvement. Perhaps we have reached a short term bottom and whether this is a longer term bottom I think depends on how comfortable investors are about the election. We clearly built in some expectation for […]
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 19 Biotech Update
More of the same yesterday and still not a ton of news for this morning. The market is overbought even if the sector is still not anywhere near over bought or all-time highs. That makes one worry a little about what happens to the sector when the market inevitably works off the overbought condition but […]
Achillion’s Pivot To Orphan Diseases
Through many years, Achillion focused on HCV, among the biggest prizes in drug discovery. The problem is they entered the field late while working on a very popular target. A nearly one year clinical hold on their protease inhibitor sovaprevir added to their woes. As work continued on HCV, by 2014, Achillion began a parallel development […]
February 19 Biotech Update
We are getting the pullback after that quick rip your face off rally and so now is the real moment of truth. Did the rally simply reset the relative strength to allow another leg lower or will buyers step in and buy this pullback? As I noted before there is no way of knowing and […]
January 27 Biotech Update
The sector finally caught a break with the macro headwinds seeming to pause only to get sector specific headwinds with Donald Trump talking about drug pricing. It was not clear exactly what he meant as the numbers he threw around for the savings from Medicaid were more than the Medicaid yearly drug expense (keeping in […]
July 24 Biotech Update
Unlike earlier this week where bad news was shrugged off, it looks like we are going to see selling on the bad news. This pullback should eventually generate nice bargains if it picks up steam but it might not be an immediate buy the dip as earning have been relatively mixed, so money may be […]
February 25 Biotech Update
I am back but have not really followed the market the past couple of days. My sense is that it has been relatively weak and could be setting up for a near term pullback. That is likely healthy in that the sector has had a good run and is getting a little stretched. Outside of […]
January 20 Biotech Update
Not the way you want to start the week with the sector going down with the rest of the market after a weak gap higher. Even more problematic is the severe weakness in the high flying momentum stocks like KITE and BLUE. The fact that these are underperforming can be read as an early warning […]
October 13 Biotech Update
It looks like we started the week in rally mode but last week certainly shows how quickly that can change from day to day just as today changed quickly as well. I feel like the market is Schrodinger’s Cat at this point. On the one hand, we are at support that has been very strong […]
[Free Report] JNJ Aquires Alios: What This Means For Achillion
Johnson & Johnson announced today it will acquire privately held Alios BioPharma for $1.75 Billion in cash, gaining rights to the mid-stage treatment for infants with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), AL-8176, and early stage nuc AL-335 for HCV. “We are excited that this acquisition will enable us to explore treatment options for a number of […]
February 4 Biotech Update- A Breather
It was certainly a much better day in the market but after the selling days like today are more breathers than anything else. It all comes down to how the market performs the next week or so and not the day after a large down day. In some ways I am encouraged that the gap […]
Upcoming Phase 3 trials
With a fresh start to 2014 and the biotech market still very strong, we wanted to examine some upcoming Phase 3 results that will be in focus in the first quarter. Expectations for some of these trials varies widely. We have a blend of small biotech to big pharma. Company: Merck (MRK) and Amgen (AMGN) […]
MDVN – Confusion over PREVAIL data explained in a single graph
On Tuesday, the market was rather confused on what to make of the PREVAIL news. To be clear, this wasn’t entirely the market’s fault: Medivation released a poorly worded press release that did not convey the whole story. A little extra detail would have gone a long way. From the press release, we know that […]
September 27- EOD
Not a particularly news rich day but the sector seemed to continue its momentum from yesterday and seemed to outperform the general market with a lot of green on a red day. 1. Well, it looks like JNJ is tossing another wrench in ECYT trials with more doxil supply problems. ECYT noted that they have […]
