It was an interesting day in the markets with NFP coming in under expectations. Rumors of a new ceasefire in the Ukraine and flash crashes in mega-cap companies. What is sort of interesting is that despite all of these events the market itself is basically flat, although I doubt it will stay flat and expect […]
September 4 Biotech Update
Markets are generally moving higher again this morning likely on the back of quantitative easing making its entrance into Europe. I expect a slightly stronger reaction to this news but it is still early, so I would not be surprised if the market strengthened throughout the day. Debates over the utility of QE aside, they […]
August 25 Biotech Update
I do not want to say this is a slow news day but outside of the ITMN deal, there is really not much else going on. The market is rallying and the sector is clearly moving with it if not taking the lead. Perhaps this will be the start of the long awaited catch-up in […]
August 14 Biotech Update
While the general trends have not changed much today, I do want to highlight one cautionary note. We are now through most earnings so that catalyst flow is going to slow and we all know that a biotech without a catalyst tends to underperform. The saving grace is that we are getting close to the […]
Merck – Preparing For The Next Move
Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) -NYSE Lately, Merck was under the spot light after Idenix Pharmaceuticals deal, paying $3.85 Billion more than triple Idenix’s market capitalization before the deal , and to take part of the Hepatitis C battle, one of the hottest areas of drug development along with GILD, ABBV and BMY. But the […]
July 29 Biotech Update
I had a great email last night that asked me to compare FMI and ILMN and so today I will go a step further and have a day of rumbles with FMI vs ILMN, CNAT vs GALT, and MRK vs PFE. I would talk a little about the broader market and sector but at this […]
July 28 Biotech Update
Not a great start to the week but the sector seems to be tracking the broader market selloff. I am really of two minds in that there are many reasons to expect the broader market to hit a significant air pocket as it seems pricey by a number of traditional valuation methods (CAPE and so […]
July 11 Biotech Update
Despite a weak macro market, biotechs actually performed pretty well yesterday. That was a surprise albeit a pleasant one. Clearly biotech has its mojo back as three or four months ago, the sector would have been down 5% on a day like yesterday. I have been talking about reactions to earnings as a signal about […]
June 18 Biotech Update
The sector (and market really) has been choppy since late yesterday morning. I would not read anything into these movements as it is a combination of low volume summer doldrums and the lack of any strong short term trend. As I have been saying for awhile, there will be a positive bias to trading for […]
June 5 Biotech Update
The market looks like it is teetering on the edge and perhaps it is the ISIS march across northern Iraq that will be the impetus to send it into the correction. What is interesting is that the biotech sector has held up well in this market weakness (although the weakness has been relatively minor at […]
June 11 Biotech Update
Another relatively slow summer day in the market in terms of trading but the sector seemed to outperform the broader market. Even with that marginal outperformance, I would not read anything new into in that I still believe that the macro is going to drive the next move. That being said I would not be […]
June 10 Biotech Update
Yesterday was a busy day and ended up being a little crazier than I planned but I am not back in the office and ready to think about some biotech. I did not have a chance to check the market yesterday so I am not sure how it traded but it seems like it is […]
May 19 Biotech Update- The Merger Drama
It was certainly an interesting start to the week in terms of the PFE/AZN drama but the price action outside of those names was somewhat muted (I guess also outside the ITMN move). My point is that outside the names directly related to news, there was nothing significant and more of a trending day (with […]
May 15 Biotech Update- The ASCO Deluge Begins
So there is a lot to talk about with the ASCO abstracts and I will divide this up over a couple of days (I am trying to write quickly to get this out so excuse typos and poor grammar for the next couple of days). In general, I think the sense is that these are […]
May 8- The Biotech Draft
While there are some stock specific pieces of news, I want to do something a little different today in honor of the NFL draft. I am going to draft my top 10 stocks. This is assuming that I have no positions at all, so this is not what I would be buying now but if […]
May 6 Biotech Update- The Slow Week Cotinues
It was another pretty blah day in biotech land. I guess this is making up for all the news we have had the past couple of weeks. As I expected, the biggest news of the days is MRK business update (you can download the slides here) and the early verdict is that they are making […]
May 5 Biotech Update
Really not a lot to talk about today. The sector had a decent morning but news flow was relatively low outside of the PFE call. Even that was a little anti-climatic as it did not really add anything that we did not already know. They made the case that an AZN deal does not destroy […]
May 2 Biotech Update- The Ups and Downs of the Sector
It was a generally good day in terms of news for the sector (with notable exceptions) but the price action was bad. I think this is going to be the probable going forward in that trading will be very choppy and volatile despite positive or negative news. I do not see this trading as changing […]
April 29 Biotech Update- A Day of Steady Progress
The rollercoaster continues as we swing up and down in seemingly ever tighter time frames. In some ways, that seems good in that base building is a messy process with fairly rapid swings. I still think the sector needs the macro environment to be at least neutral in order to really set in a base […]
April 28 Biotech Update- Turning Up the M&A Speculation
It was another interesting and good start to the week (until we got into the usual late morning selling). In fact, it seems like we were just talking about a PFE offer for AZN last Monday (oh, wait we were). Is this the reason that the sector is stronger or are we simply getting an […]
