The trading seems to be more of the same in that the sector is modestly outperforming the market but more or less simply trading flat. There are certainly some moves under the surface but the sector writ large has more or less flatlined for about 18 months now and that has become even more obvious […]
May 15 Biotech Update
It is a pretty slow start to the week. We have ASCO abstract coming up on the 17th and I believe EHA abstracts on the 18th. Without any real thesis changing news I expect the current trends to continue on relatively low volume and that seems to be underperformance of large caps and outperformance of […]
April 25 Biotech Update
The market continues to have a tail wind as France and North Korean risks are being removed (although not sure we are quite out of the woods on North Korea but could be relatively soon). The sector seems to be participating a little more today, which is a positive sign but as I noted yesterday […]
April 24 Biotech Update
The market is surging and is dragging the sector higher with it. It seems to me that the sector is not doing particularly well given the new risk on environment but it is also not doing exceptionally poor. We had a large M&A announcement but it was med tech so we are still waiting for […]
April 18 Biotech Update
Nothing dramatically new happening in the sector. There are a couple of interesting tidbits that are worth talking about but certainly no thesis changing or confirming news. 1. JNJ started off the earnings season with a mixed quarter. It is tough to read from JNJ to the sector writ large given the diverse base and […]
April 13 Biotech Update
More of the same as we move into Easter weekend. Tensions are building in Korea and there is almost a pathological disinterest in biotech with anemic volumes. If this were a bull market the underlying bid would lead to a drift higher but for the sector it is leading to a drift lower. It is […]
April 3 Biotech Update
AACR is in full swing with a couple more days worth of data coming but so far there has not been anything thesis changing to the upside or downside. To be fair, we have more data expected in the next couple days but as I noted previously this tends to be an earlier stage conference. […]
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 […]
January 23 Biotech Update
There is not a lot of new news out this week but this is a week where earnings start, which could pick up the pace a little in terms of fundamental news. Two potential caveats. First, coming on the heels of JPM there is likely not a lot of new information to be provided. Companies […]
December 26 Biotech Update
I hope that everyone is having a good holiday season. News has slowed to a crawl and I will start making the 2017 previews unless there is some breaking news. I will start with large caps and move down the capital structure. 1. My 2017 large cap biotech pick is CELG (surprise) but I am […]
December 20 Biotech Update
Well, this has been a strangely interesting day for the week before Christmas. I thought the bulk of news was done but I clearly spoke too soon. There is some good news for the sector as well as some good-well-maybe-bad-let-us-argue news. I am going to go through these as sort of quick hits as none […]
December 19 Biotech Update
We are winding down and gearing up. The year is winding down so the news flow seems to be drying up but we are starting to gear up with 2017 predictions and JPM. Perhaps tax loss selling is slowing but I still think that might be the biggest headwind into the end of the year […]
December 8 Biotech Update
So the sector seems to be moving beyond the Trump Tantrum if only slowly. It sort of helps that we have something else to obsess and argue about with Alzheimer’s data. While we have years before the BIIB phase III data and nothing has been settled, it is important data worth a focus for today. […]
November 28 Biotech Update
I vaguely (not really vaguely) recall noting last Tuesday that we were likely done with news unless some company wanted to sneak bad news in right before the holiday. I was correct but wrong. We had two majors pieces of negative news (LLY and JUNO) and surprisingly the sector managed to hold up relatively well […]
November 14 Biotech Update
And we continue with the Trump effect in the sector. As I noted before this is going to be a longer term tailwind despite what people argue about the potential transitory nature. Yes, we will not go straight up and yes it is not 100% positive forever but this is a sector that has grossly […]
November 7 Biotech Update
Welcome to election week and stock performance across the board are going to be highly correlated. I suspect the move today is the pricing in of an increased probability of a Clinton victory. At this point, my expected outcome is a Clinton victory, Republicans hold the house, and the Senate is all but split up […]
October 31 Biotech Update
There is nothing that seems to help the sector. The clear sentiment headwind is the election and that is certainly plausible. A non-democratic sweep of the presidency, senate, and house should be good for the sector. Of course, everyone expects that so usually when everyone expects something the market does not act in that way. […]
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 25 Biotech Update
Earnings have started and so far nothing great but nothing horrible. In fact there were some notable misses but we may be at the point that misses will rally stocks given how low expectations have fallen. So not only do we need to pay attention to what the earnings say about the fundamentals of the […]
