It ended up not being a horrible day for the sector but certainly not great. We started a modest late day rally that seems to have continued into this morning but it has a way to go before it becomes more convincing. On the positive, it seemed to start around support but one the negative […]
June 14 Biotech Update
The sector continues to struggle but for some reason we seem to be getting a bounce today despite a set of fairly negative news. It obviously remains to be seen if this bounce can have any sort of staying power but it is certainly not driven by positive news. 1. I want to actually take […]
June 13
Without any real bullish news, the sector continues with its struggles. We have seen this story before and every other time it lead to a new low or a test of the previous low. Ideally, the sector would bounce before either of those but it is hard to have confidence in that given the relentless […]
June 10 Biotech Update
We are having a decent pullback yesterday and this morning. Many are still frustrated with the sector and are getting the feeling of “here we go again” but pullbacks happen in bull markets. This is not to say that we are in the midst of a new bio-bull market but that we should not run […]
We saw some more low volume drift and no real news to break through the summer doldrums, which seems to be in effect. I think this will probably be the rule for the rest of the summer with choppy, low volume trading as the rule punctuated but news filled days that drive the sector (or […]
June 8 Biotech Update
Yesterday was surprisingly good, although so far we have not really had a nice follow through to start today. That being said the rally started to pick up steam later in the day, so perhaps we will follow the same pattern. If we continue to trade well in lieu of the negative news yesterday, then […]
June 7 Biotech Update
Today is going to be a real test of the sector with all the negative news that came out. I am sure some will try to call this the ASCO hangover but any selling today has little to do with ASCO. The sector has had a good run and I would not be surprised to […]
June 6 Biotech Update
It’s the Monday after ASCO started and it is time to declare the winners and losers. Even when we have definitive data this is often a less than precise undertaking and this is especially the case this year when the data are early and incremental. So I will spend today talking about why the consensus […]
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 […]
June 2 Biotech Update
I missed a day but not much happened. The sector continues to do well and it seems to be slowly turning sentiment around. The one negative (or perhaps positive) is that the ISI traders noted that there is still not buying demand and the move seems to be driven by a lack of sellers and […]
May 31 Biotech Update
So we got a little takeover Tuesday but not the mega deals that would have been transformative. I think we are at the point that we likely needed a deal after the long weekend to keep the momentum going. This is not to say we need deals every week but I suspect it would have […]
May 27 Biotech Update
Yesterday was not a great day but after the run having a treading water sort of trading is not the worst outcome. At the worst, we were trading in line with the market and the key will be what we do after the recent move has been digested. The trend has been higher, so the […]
May 26 Biotech Update
Yesterday was more of the same and that is actually good for one of the first times this year. The sector continues higher and modestly outperformer the broader markets. The one negative was that ISI noted that there has been a lack of real money interest. In other words, long term institutional money has not […]
May 25 Biotech Update
The market continues higher and the sector with it. We seem to be moving away from the previous lows with broader participation with SMID and large caps. This market continues to be hated and I suspect people are still underinvested in healthcare. This all makes me marginally more bullish in the near term even though […]
May 24 Biotech Update
I do not think anything dramatic happened when I was away. The sector seems to be holding the support which is most important. In addition, one could perhaps argue that the outperformance has continued to a modest extent. All of that being said volumes are low and will likely go lower as we enter the […]
May 19 Biotech Update
The sector did well the other day especially given the weakness in the broader markets. We have, however, seen this before and last time the sector grossly underperformed once the broader markets recovered. So while it is good to see the relative strength and hopefully it continues, it also needs to last more than a […]
May 18 Biotech Update
The sector remains in a precarious position, which is nothing new. ISI had a call yesterday with its technician and the overwhelming view on most of the stocks was that they are at a decision point- the short term chart does not look great but they are at long term support. He tended to lean […]
May 16 Biotech Update
We got some decent news flow to start the week both positive and negative. Who knows how that will balance out in terms of the sector general performance but this should be a week driven by news related moves with ASCO abstracts and the ABBV IPR decision still on deck. 1. The biggest data news […]
May 13 Biotech Update
I feel like we have been here before with the sector flirting with a major breakdown triggering another leg lower. We have yet to get that break but we are in another decision zone so the trading the next couple days will be quite telling. The selling is once again being led by spec pharma […]
May 12 Biotech Update
The sector did not do well yesterday but it is hard to call it underperformance given the broader markets. Clearly there does not seem to be any real interest to buy biotech even if there is no interest to sell it aggressively. Given the year we have had to date, I do not want to […]
