Well, I can honestly say that on Wednesday I did not think the sector would be looking this good on Friday. The economy seems to be improving, the macro (outside of the Greek noise) seems benign, and the sector seems to be shrugging off the hep-C discounts. I am a little surprised but you also […]
January 27 Biotech Update
A bad start for the market in terms of earnings, economic data, and price action. It appears that FX and the capital spending decline coming from oil prices is creating a significant headwind. Despite the gap down, biotechs were basically unchanged if not higher. That is quite the odd scenario as risk off should hit […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
August 7 Biotech Update
A good start for the market but biotechs seemed to not be participating. While nothing in biotech stood out as particularly strong in the morning, it seems like small caps were slightly better than large caps. This was a trend I want to follow as it would mark a significant change in the sector as […]
August 6 Biotech Update
The market had some volatility yesterday and inversions seemed to be dealt a blow this morning. As such, I will focus on these two topics as they seem to be driving the majority of trading. 1. If you were watching the market yesterday, then you may have noticed what seemed like a random and significant […]
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 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 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 […]
May 21 Biotech Update- A Little More Drama
It was a quiet day in the market. The sector started off well but it seemed to simply be following the broader market. I still think we are unfortunately tied to the macro and that the next move in the sector will be with the market. It could be that if the move is down […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
April 21 Biotech Update- Some Good News to Start the Week
You would think the morning after a holiday would not be too busy but I have been running around all morning trying to organize a number of different projects. Luckily there are really only two issues that I wanted to address today as they have import for both individual stocks but also perhaps for the […]
April 7 Biotech Update- An Active AACR
So a lot to talk about and I will briefly touch on a lot and then expand later this week as I doubt many days will be a busy as today in term of news. The sector had a good morning but we have seen this before and at this point it will not be […]
Pfizer – Technical points to watch
Pfizer Inc. (PFE) -NYSE A long awaited date from Pfizer revealed on Sunday April 04, 2014 at the AACR-2014. Pfizer announced detailed results from the PALOMA-1 study, a randomized Phase 2 study of palbociclib in combination with letrozole. PALOMA-1 achieved its primary endpoint by significantly prolonging progression-free survival (PFS) compared with letrozole alone in post-menopausal women with […]
