Welcome to 2017 and we are not off to a great fundamental start with a phase III failure, capital raises and price increases. In other words, more of the same. I will continue with my previews but want to start off with a broad overview of the sector and perhaps an alternative narrative for 2016 […]
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 16 Biotech Update
I am back from jury duty and will try and catch up on the events of this week but will continue that next week before the holiday break. The trading in the sector seems to have been volatile in that there seems to have been no real movement but some twists and turns to get […]
December 2 Biotech Update
ASH starts soon and the sector needs some more positive news as it is really starting to lag. Outside of the initial election pop it has been pretty bad in terms of relative performance. To be fair, the news outside of the election has been failures and secondaries. Obviously the sector needs more than the […]
November 30 Biotech Update
We are in a lull before a flood of data arrives at the end of this week and then into ASH next week. There is not a lot of new but we did have some interesting moves yesterday that are worth talking about. 1. I have already talked about the BLUE/CELG BCMA CART data that […]
November 29 Biotech Update
It seems like the election move is taking a time out and some consolidation is happening. That is not surprising given the move and (at least for the sector) the news. Despite the pause, we are heading into a historically good period for the sector as well as a time of increased M&A activity. I […]
November 22 Biotech Update
More of the same in terms of slow news and likely decreasing volumes into the weekend. We do have a couple pieces of fundamental news to talk about but nothing groundbreaking in its importance. 1. The most meaningful is the removal of the partial clinical hold of the head and neck combo trials for AZN. […]
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 28 Biotech Update
A week into earnings season and while it is not perfect, it is clearly better than the fears going in and the price action indicated. No company has really missed in a big way. A fair number of companies beat and raised and you had some positive clinical news sprinkled in. That being said the […]
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 […]
Dave Trading – October Edition – Bargain Hunting Time?
*** 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 […]
October 18 Biotech Update
It is still not great out there for the sector but yesterday was not awful, which I guess is an improvement. Perhaps we have reached a short term bottom and whether this is a longer term bottom I think depends on how comfortable investors are about the election. We clearly built in some expectation for […]
October 17 Biotech Update
The sector continues to weaken but still remains above the 200 day moving average. It seems to me that some panic is starting to set in as the sector cannot slow the bleeding. The selling appears to be relentless with nothing acting as support. As long as we stay above the 200 day, I am […]
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 11 Biotech Update
Looks like we are going to move from good to bad with earnings warnings likely to weigh on the sector today. I think there was always some concern about earnings heading into the upcoming reports and this has only been exacerbated today. 1. In terms of the earnings warnings that came out (ILMN and HZNP), […]
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 […]
September 26 Biotech Update
Nothing really to move the sector to start the week, so it looks like we sell off with the rest of the market. This price action does not change my thesis that the sector’s path of least resistance is higher for the rest of the year but given the run we do likely need news […]
September 23 Biotech Update
The sector seems to be quieting down a little and perhaps a little bit of consolidation of the recent move is in the cards. All in all, however, it seems like a productive week for the sector and confirms my base case that the likely path moving forward is higher (with the obvious pullbacks sprinkle […]
