Drug and Biotechnology Stocks Up Across the Spectrum
Its “groundhog day” in biotech world. Apparently money that has come out of tech stocks and money markets is going into healthcare stocks. In case you missed it even large cap drug stocks which have lagged the S&P YTD are in a rally mode. Are biotech stocks igniting drug stocks? The biotechnology and drugs sector are beating the S&P over the past month by 4% according to Google finance data:
Biotechnology & Drugs – Google Finance
Among the large cap major drugs winners today are: Abbott (ABT $51.75 ) up 1.5%, Bristol Myers (BMY $27.90) up 1%, Glaxo (GSK $41.13 up 0.93% ) up 1%, Merck (MRK $34.72 ) up 2.7% and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ $60.77 ) up 1.25%. Merck and JNJ settled their differences on Remicade marketing.
In the hot biotech sector laggards are winners and winners continue to roll on:
Amgen (AMGN) overcame its stall rising 2% to $55.95. Cubist (CBST $31.56 ) up 3.95% and Viropharma (VPHM $21.7) up 5% continued momentum from yesterday . Our mid-cap index of 33 biotech stocks is very green today up 1.50%. Cubist EPS estimates were upped by Oppenheimer.
News was good:
Acorda(ACOR $28.15 ) is up 3.76% on patent speculation with their top selling drug Ampyra for MS.
Alkermes (ALKS $13.99) up 4.33% on potential regulatory approval of the Bydureon diabetes drug. They are partnered with Lilly (LLY) and Amylin (AMLN $12.81) up 13.77%.
Momenta (MNTA $16.76) is up 6.85% on “neutral” coverage by UBS!
The Rayno Life Science Portfolio was up on par with ETF’s about 0.8% with a few larger cap laggards: Cephalon(CEPH),Gilead (GILD) and Illumina(ILMN).Immucor (BLUD) was up 0.88% even after announcing departure of the COO. Auxilium (AUXL) was upgraded to a buy at UBS. Amazingly, Biogen(BIIB) already on a tear up 23% YTD, was upgraded by MP Advisors. Exact Sciences (EXAS $7.59) rolled on up 4.55%.
The biotech market is overbought but the tape does not care.