A day before the Bernanke addresses the public on potential FED plans and the state of the economy the market reverted back to the Euro Debt crisis selling tracking the European stocks decline. The market major indices sold off 1.5% while the FTSE-100 was off 1.44%. NASDAQ was off 1.95%. The leading sector was materials off 0.93% and healthcare sold off a surprising 1.96%. Sector trends do not appear to be relevant only the general macro trends like lack of job growth, excessive debt and slack consumer demand. Earlier in the day even Buffett could not offer support to the market and some pundits said it was not a great deal for BAC shareholders.

This story on Bloomberg about the recent S&P AAA downgrade of US Treasuries is a case in point as to how wacky, wild and whipsawing this market has been. Treasuries get downgraded by S&P but they go up and the market goes down losing $1T in market value. Moreover McGraw-Hill stock, parent of Standard and Poors  lost 15% more than twice that of the S&P 500.

Getting back to life science stocks there is little that can be said about any trends particularly among the mid and small caps down an average of 2.5% today. Major ETF’s were also down 2.5%. We are red-lining selective large cap biotech and drug stocks to make sure we have a technical bottom to the sector. Most  mid cap stocks without exceptional news and strong balance sheets are trading along with NASDAQ.

Abbott(ABT) was off more than 2% due to a Morgan Keegan downgrade citing concern about comparisons to other medical equipment stocks like Medtronic that have sluggish hospital growth. My index of 19 MedTech stocks was down 2% today.

Within the Rayno Life Science Portfolio only two stocks were green Seattle Genetics (SGEN) up 1% and SeraCare (SRLS) up 1.75%.

Pin It on Pinterest