Any momentum in biotech stocks from ASCO have been eclipsed by bearish, volatile trends overall. There were some nice moves up today with the Rayno Life Science Portfolio was up 2.67% and all bio ETF’s did well: FBT up 3%,XBI up 3.48%, and IBB up 3.11%. Among the big movers in the Rayno Portfolio were: Alexion (ALXN),Celegene(CELG), Celera(CRA), Gilead (GILD) , Illumina(ILMN), Nektar (NKTR), Regeneron(RGEN), Seattle Genetics(SGEN) and United Therapeutics(UTHR). Despite a severe correction since May 1 biotech stocks still are doing better than the overall market with the NYSE Arca Biotech up 8% YTD.
Gilead (GILD) hit a Five Year low of $32+ and looks like a good candidate for a bounce.
Celera (CRA) was recently added to the portfolio with a buy at $7.
Celgene (CELG) had good news on Revlimid at ASCO but the stock sold off and now is at $52.40.
Nektar (NKTR) is up 12% in two days as a result of positive clinical news from their metastatic breast cancer agent in Phase 2.
Seattle Genetics (SGEN) is up 35% YTD and an institution (Baker Bros) added ~560k shares to their position yesterday.
As we noted earlier this week ASCO has not helped biotech stocks despite good news on the clinical and regulatory front and has underperformed the NASDAQ since March 30. Look at the two ETF charts below:
Leerink Swann in their recent biotech report gave support to two of the major trends in cancer therapy : targeted agents that block receptors confirming a need for biomarkers to select patient populations for the optimal drug; the potential for immunotherapy whereby the immune system is selectively up/down-regulated to fight cancer such as Dendreon’s Provenge and Bristol Myers’ (BMY) anti-CTLA 4. Another concern that has come out of ASCO is the high costs of new therapies with only months of incremental survival benefit.