A blah start to the trading day. There are not a particularly large numbers of movers and the market seems for the most part to be drifting. As such, it is difficult to discern any real trend outside of chop. So it seems like the market and sector are searching for a direction. I would […]
December 3 Biotech Update
It is a basically neutral day in the market but the sector seems a little weak but this is off of a good day yesterday. One problem to keep an eye on is that many of the stocks I follow start very strong but weaken throughout the day. I would certainly prefer to stop seeing […]
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 […]
October 22 Biotech Update
After a couple days of ripping higher the markets seemed to have calmed a little, which is understandable as this rip higher needs to be digested. The small caps tended to underperform the past couple days but it still might be a little too early to call it a trend and it could just be […]
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 2 Biotech Update
A tough end to USA soccer in the World Cup but another good morning for biotech stocks. I have some follow up discussion from earlier this week as there is not a ton of new news this morning. I suspect that will be the case as we get closer to the long weekend (but we, […]
April 30 Biotech Update
It is not Tuesday so the selling continues. It seems like the turnaround Tuesdays happen but have no sticking power. At some point that trend will change and that should be an important tell. Whether that happens today or in a couple of months is not clear at this time but as long as the […]
April 23 Biotech Update- Shooting Out of the Earnings Gate
This was a relatively slow news day (compared to yesterday and Monday) but there is still a lot to talk about with the large cap earnings. The sector did not responsd great but it is still early and I want to see how it closes before judging this reaction. In addition, the market backdrop was […]
April 8 Biotech Update- Revenge of the Pricing Questions
While I was expecting to talk a little about AGIO today, I want to go back to the macro sector sentiment as the proverbial hits keep on coming with ESRX making more noise about Sovaldi prices. In general, ESRX is arguing that GILD is going to bankrupt the entire healthcare system and that they will […]
February 21 Biotech Update- Data and Earnings Movers
Today seemed like a mixed day. There was certainly some areas of strength but nothing really seemed to catch a bid outside of news specific movers. While I do not know if this is true in terms of the performance, the sector really seemed sort of heavy early in the morning. Eventually some buyers came […]
January 29- Biotech Update
Would you believe another snow day in Louisiana, which is number three in the past couple of weeks (if you were counting). In general, despite a very weak market , biotechs did fairly well, although it was the large caps holding up the sector with the small caps more mixed. It was nice to see […]
January 9- The Biotech Momentum Continues
It was a great day for biotechs despite a neutral to bearish macro drag. We not only had some great price action but we continued with the positive news. This is creating a nice bid under the sector and even the large caps that did not have much news per se moved higher. It is […]
November 22 Biotech Update- A Busy CHMP out with some Bullish News
You will notice that I am change the title to something more descriptive, hopefully you will still read the updates with this change. Sentiment is certainly shifting in the biotech sector and it seems to be doing so as quickly as it turned negative. What was my fear that the sector would be hit with […]
ASH 2013 Preview on Lymphoid Malignancies
This year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology(ASH13) is highly anticipated for a number of reasons. Pharmacyclic’s Ibrutinib could be viewed as one of the several catalysts sparking the biotech sector’s run the past 2 years. They are now within months of receiving approval for 2 indications where they could benefit patient lives […]
ASH 2013 Preview on rare blood disorders
This year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH13) is highly anticipated for a number of reasons. Orphan diseases has been a key element in the bull market in biotech over the past 2-3 years. Consider that the market for hemophilia A treatments in 2011 was over $5 billion alone. Today’s preview will […]
July 25- EOD
We had a lot of large cap biotech news in terms of the earnings and I wanted to focus on two of them as both had clean beats but also gave some investors pause: CELG and BIIB. 1. BIIB absolutely blew out BG-12 sales. The sell side consensus was $70M and the buyside whisper was […]
July 1- EOD
Today was the fallout of the AMGN bid for ONXX. There are a couple of aspects of it that I want to touch on and go a little further than my article this morning. 1. In my article I tried to cover the companies that I thought had the most compelling reasons to be interested […]
June 28- EOD
Not much of a lot of new today but there were some interesting tidbits. 1. BIIB spiked higher today on the back of SNY news. The EMA granted Aubagio exclusivity and traders immediately wanted to tie this into the debate over BG12 exclusivity in the EU. I am not sure that this is anything more […]
June 14- Midday
This is midday today as I will be out of my office for the rest of the day. So an early surprise. A very odd day today in the market. Biotechs really seemed to lag for some reason even when the market was not a real drag. Let’s see how we end the day. 1. […]
June 12- EOD
It was sort of an odd day in the market. It actually felt worse than it was earlier in the day, partly because we started with some strength and then sold off. I have a hard time figuring if biotechs were relatively strong or weak. For the most part, it seemed like they were weaker […]
