July 2 Biotech Update

Apparently I am the problem with the sector. I miss one day and the sector moves higher and now that I am back it is back to going lower. I would argue that today seems to be driven more by the broader market but it is still going down. On the positive, I will be […]

June 28 Biotech Update

I tried to hold out as much hope for the sector as possible but the selling has been non-stop since the false breakout. The first bit of selling made sense against a weaker market and a natural retest of the breakout but it has not stopped and one could possible argue that it accelerated. It […]

June 27 Biotech Update

We still might be able to salvage a bullish view but it is getting pretty difficult. Clearly the breakout did not occur but we are still in higher highs and higher lows position from the April lows but we cannot have another big sell off and maintain that view. On the positive side, we have […]

June 26 Biotech Update

Yesterday was a brutal day and the odds now favor it being a false breakout of the sector. I would not say all is lost as if we can bounce soon, we might be setting up a higher low but there is not a lot of room for error in the sector. 1. AKAO received […]

June 25 Biotech Update

This will be an interesting day to see if the breakout will be confirmed as real or confirmed as false. We are back testing the previous levels of resistance and without a bounce from these levels, then I doubt the sector can continue to move higher. The news this morning is not helping as there […]

June 21 Biotech Update

Sector strength continued and is clearly outperforming the broader market. While we have seen this happen for a couple days before, this feels more like a real breakout. Ideally, we would need to pullback and test the previous resistance and have it act as support to confirm the move but I suspect it would hold. […]

June 20 Biotech Update

You would think replacing a computer would be an easy job, it apparently requires different layers of people and so not everyone was on campus yesterday. So at some point in the future I have to look forward to the computer replacement process to eat half of my day. In any case, at least the […]

June 19 Biotech Update

The trade war is taking a lot of the headlines and I am running out of time to write as they are replacing my computer soon, which will likely take a lot more time that it reasonably should but I wanted to write a quick note. 1. SRPT hit a grand slam. Not only did […]

June 18 Biotech Update

Nothing new to start the week outside of a pretty weak market. I am not sure what the catalyst outside of an extended market but it looks again like the sector is hitting resistance and unable to break out. Perhaps there is continued disappoint in term of the lack of deals but regardless of the […]

June 15 Biotech Update

EHA is here and there will be some updates that are of interest but for the most part, I do not see it as having a fundamental effect on the sector. The XBI is flirting with breaking above resistance but it is struggling at what looks like the third attempt to break higher at these […]

June 13 Biotech Update

The sector had a decent day, although participation was not great. We seem to be on the verge of breaking higher (at least in the XBI) but it will be difficult to do unless the rally is broader in its scope. Of course, one cannot complain too much given that we are generally moving higher […]

June 12 Biotech Update

Nothing too exciting in terms of market action yesterday. There was some relatively outperformance of large caps versus small caps but that was mainly due to the gene therapy carnage. This is once again going to be an interesting test of sentiment in that space. Gene therapy companies have been pretty much Teflon in that […]

June 11 Biotech Update

I missed out on how the sector traded at the end of the week but it seems like the large caps had the slight edge over the SMID. We are entering a period of what should be some low news days but we do have EHA this week, which could provide some data but it […]

June 6 Biotech Update

The sector did a little better yesterday but given the strength of the market, it is not a great performance. That being said another couple days in the green and perhaps this year will be different and we will not see the post-ASCO selloff. Obviously it is early but something to keep an eye on […]

June 5 Biotech Update

We had our typical post ASCO selloff even after a morning attempt at a move higher. Even the ASCO winners ended up getting hit in the sell off. This was a sadly predictable reaction often gives us some nice buying opportunities. I would not rush in today as the ASCO selloff is typically not a […]

June 4 Biotech Update

Despite the lack of any real thesis changing news, ASCO seemed to be fairly typical. There will be a couple of big winners but more losers as you have both bad data and data that was good but not good enough for inflated expectations. Given the dearth of major data, I wonder if there will […]

June 1 Biotech Update

Happy ASCO days. The first day tends to be slow as news as it is information sessions, although later in the day we get some important CART data. In any case, by Monday we should have some interesting data to dissect. 1. CELG and BLUE have their BCMA CART data this evening. Expectations are high […]

May 31 Biotech Update

Some interesting news as we head into ASCO. While the trading action is a little better for the sector it is not exactly tearing it up. Of course, the lack of a real ASCO run up generally does not correlate with a lower than average chance of an ASCO hangover. It is possible that it […]

May 29 Biotech Update

You would think that after a long weekend there would be more news but it is a slow start to the week. Perhaps it is related to the upcoming ASCO conference. Unfortunately, it looks like macro might again grip the sector as another Euro based crisis has arisen with fears of an impending Italian crisis. […]

May 25 Biotech Update

We end the week as we started the week with not a lot of news and basically in a holding pattern for ASCO. Hopefully the sector does better today than it did on Monday and perhaps the anticipation of a long weekend is enough to get some buyers interested but we are certainly entering the […]