Healthcare Stocks Are Tracking Well-Indices are at Record Highs
- Look to Large Cap Biopharma earnings in coming weeks. Pfizer on Wednesday.
- Momentum in speculative small caps are lagging so may need to wait for Q4.
- Macro concerns lie ahead: China, Infrastructure deal and delta variant.
Our healthcare portfolios is tracking well in our model with the XLV up over 15% YTD comparable to the DOW up 14.64% YTD. The SPY did a little better up over 17% YTD. Healthcare stocks are considered more defensive but offer growth plus dividends. Many large cap biopharma stocks are near 52 week highs: ABBV, ALXN, LLY, BMY and PFE. The leader in our portfolio is United Health (UNH) up 21.4% The IBB larger cap weighted ETF is coming back but lags slightly up 10% YTD.To keep your portfolio simple you would have done well in healthcare with just the IBB and XLV.
The biggest boost to biotech has been COVID vaccines with three vaccine stocks leading the momentum: BNTX MRNA and NVAX. The success of the COVID vaccine program is largely responsible for the reopening of the US economy as well as the current bull market.If you owned just small positions in any of these stocks your portfolio is way ahead in 2021.
The boom in smaller cap biotech stocks peaked early around February of this year and as you can see have not fully recovered with the XBI down 9.23% YTD! The Russell 2000 (IWM) has eased lately as well but still up 11.83% YTD. Also the ARKG is down YTD and should be traded on momentum upswings.For the longer term we have recommended the T.Rowe Price Health Sciences Fund (PRHSX)
Portfolio Re-Balancing
We recently picked three smaller cap stocks that can offer long term growth and stock appreciation: CryoPort (CYRX), CRSPR Therapeutics (CRSP) and Veracyte (VCYT). They were good trades since mid-May but have been volatile and are off their recent highs.
We also bought Quidel (QDEL) calls and stock two weeks ago at 125-130 and sold half our position.QDEL is currently at $150.
Choppy trading lies ahead from a seasonal aspect compounded by concerns about the infrastructure deal. Delta COVID is also on the rise
| Initial | 2020 | |||||||||||
| Stock/ETF | Ticker | Price | Wgt | 11/27 | %Perf | Price | QTR | 2020 | Price | YTD | High P | 52w |
| 10/25 | % | 1 mo. | 12/31 | % | % Perf | 7/24/21 | % Perf | 2021 | ||||
| iShares NAZ Bio | IBB | 136 | 25 | 143.22 | 2.27 | 151.5 | 11.9 | 25.7 | 166.72 | 10.05 | 172.6 | |
| iShares Russell 2k | IWM | 163 | 10 | 184.37 | 16.56 | 196.4 | 30.9 | 18.3 | 219.55 | 11.83 | 234.42 | |
| Merck | MRK | 80 | 10 | 79.86 | 2.4 | 81.77 | -1.39 | -10 | 77.39 | -0.66 | 85 | |
| United Health | UNH | 330 | 25 | 337.94 | 5.44 | 350.7 | 12.5 | 19.3 | 416.86 | 21.4 | 425.98 | H |
| SPDR S&P Bio | XBI | 117 | 5 | 131.46 | 11.95 | 140.8 | 26.3 | 48 | 126.51 | -9.23 | 174 | |
| Healthcare SPDR | XLV | 108 | 25 | 109.44 | 3.35 | 113.4 | 7.55 | 11.4 | 131.48 | 15.28 | 131.61 | H |
| iShares U.S MedT | IHI | 59.24 |
new 6/21
|
62.67 | 13.56 | 62.69 | H | |||||
| ARK Genomic | ARKG | 79.74 |
new 5/21
|
85.66 | -8.15 | 115.15 | ||||||
| DOW | DIA | 350.57 | 14.64 | 351.09 | H | |||||||
| S&P 500 | SPY | 439.94 | 17.67 | 440.3 | H | |||||||
| NASDAQ-100 | QQQ | rating | 368.2 | 17.6 | 368.49 | H | ||||||
| T.Rowe Hlth Sci |
PRHSX
|
***** | 2021 | * | 110.46 | 11.6 | 110.46 | H | ||||
| Fido Biotech |
FBIOX
|
*** | 2021 | * | 22.57 | -3.48 | 27.73 | |||||
| SPDR S&P Pharm | XPH | 52.36 | 0.58 | 56 | ||||||||