October 27 Biotech Update

It has been an absolutely brutal earing season for the sector and for pretty good reason but you have also seen some babies being thrown out with the bathwater. Given the selling that has occurred, it is a natural reaction to assume these are buys or a bounce is coming but I prefer to sit […]

Dave-Trading November Edition

*** David Sobek is a disciplined value investor.  Using models, research, and fundamental data, David devises a value for biotech stocks, buys when significantly undervalued, and sells when significantly overvalued.*** As a reminder, this is my personal guide.  You can alter it in accordance with your risk tolerance. >3 Standard deviations – No position 2-3 […]

July 27 Biotech Update

There is a lot to talk about today, so I will jump right into the most interesting and important news. 1. MYSTIC did not meet the primary PFS endpoint. There was no PFS benefit over chemo with either monotherapy or combination. This is disappointing but not necessarily the end of the story. While the details […]

July 21 Biotech Update

I am back and missed all the fireworks yesterday. This week has gone quite well for the sector in terms of fundamentals and the price action reflected it. We sort of dodge a bullet as continued weakness would have been a significant problem. News will continue next week with the start of the large cap […]

July 19 Biotech Update

The sector got a big boost from VRTX last night. If it cannot rally off of this news, then buckle your seatbelts and hedge your positions as there is unlikely to be better news anytime soon. The only large catalyst that could match this impact would be a home run for MYSTIC or AXON crushing […]

July 14 Biotech Update

Not a lot of news to end the week, so I will touch on a couple of quick longer term themes. The sector was a little stronger than I would have expected yesterday on the back of the news that medicare will not run out of money until 2029 meaning that IPAB will not be […]

May 31 Biotech Update

No news continues this week and now we are in a low volume bounce mode. It is unclear if it will hold but it might as it was not as if there was a ton of selling pressure that moved stocks lower. It seems more of a buyer strike than a real concerted effort to […]

May 1 Biotech Update

This week has another batch of earnings that will likely drive sentiment and price action. So far it seems like the sector is more or less trading in line with the market but perhaps slightly better. There is still some follow up from last week to talk about and one big earning tomorrow. 1. When […]

April 12 Biotech Update

Nothing has changed really in terms of politics. There is still talk coming out of Washington about health care reform not being dead and I do think they are still trying. The problem facing Trump is that without the savings from health care reform, the tax cuts in tax reform explode the deficit. In other […]

April 11 Biotech Update

We are inching closer to a major black swan as I noted earlier. This is keeping me very cautious about initiating new positions in size. Keep in mind that April 15th is the Day of the Sun (celebration of birthday of Kim il-sung), which is a period of tension with the North Korean government usually […]

March 29 Biotech Update

Yesterday was the opposite of my market thesis but perhaps that was related to the new talk about healthcare reform not being dead. I would slightly increase the odds that a new bill is introduced and perhaps passed in the House but it would have to be significantly different to pass the Senate and that […]

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 8 Biotech Update

I was not too busy to write yesterday but there was really nothing that I could find that was interesting enough to write about. I looked for something and there was a big lack of company specific news and that is the case today as well. We are a little too early to talk about […]

March 6 Biotech Update

There is a little bit of news to start the week but nothing that likely seems thesis changing or will have a dramatic impact on sentiment/trends. We are in the tail end of earnings with a drum beat of small caps that might have some impact on the individuals companies but little on the sector. […]

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 […]

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 […]

October 26 Biotech Update

It looks like the sector is not responding well to decent news. As I noted yesterday nothing has had a perfect press release but given the selloff perfect news was clearly not priced in. To be clear, there is some positive price action on positive news but it seems very isolated and very susceptible to […]

October 14 Biotech Update

The sector may be due for a snap back (with the broader market) but I still get the sense that people are worried. My prevailing thought has been that this was related to both earnings jitters and a set of negative data. I still think those are a factor but I also wonder if the […]

October 4 Biotech Update

Today is certainly a better start. It seems that the sector is trading to a certain extent on macro issues with the DB concerns leading to risk on versus risk off action. The sector will always be a victim to large risk off moves, so if the DB situation resolves I would not be surprised […]

June 3 Biotech Update

Not much in terms of news to end the week as we head into ASCO. The jobs report may make this a macro day sell off (although if you dig into the jobs report the big miss seems to be driven entirely by the Verizon strike, so when that ends this should completely reverse). In […]