Update-1 1/14/2 12:30 EDT…Very Bullish Tape today–Update at Close

IBB up 1.27% ,  XBI up 2.47%.

Gene therapy stocks are on a tear even before BLUE and EDIT (both up >5%)  present later today and tomorrow.

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J.P.Morgan Healthcare Conference Notes #1: Biotech Sectors Lag, IBB down 1.08%, XBI down 2.01%

Many big winners today of 5% or more.

Despite an overall strong day in the market with all major indices up, biotech was a laggard.One of the leading ETFs the NASDAQ-100 (QQQ) was up 1.15% to $220.95. It could be a sell program after the strong Q4 showing or maybe earnings and guidance were not meeting high expectations.  But we will recap news and movers this week for the 38th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

  • More speculative stocks were down like gene therapy.
  • Mid-caps were mixed but with several winners: MRNA, NKTR, GWPH, RARE, RGEN, XNCR
  • Large caps were a bit sluggish, except for BMY up 1.41%

First a quick summary of picks we featured in 2019:

Teledoc Health, Inc ( TDOC) was up 12.69% to $95.97 after a bullish presentation by the CEO and announcing a $600M deal with InTouch Health, which sells enterprise telehealth solutions to hospitals. The deal is expected to strengthen long-term growth by providing advanced clinical use cases for expanded care delivery. We introduced readers to TDOC in January 2019 a $54.50 and despite the volatility it looks like a long-term hold.

Amarin Corp ( AMRN) was in a recovery mode today up 4.11% to $19.75 after a volatile 2019 when the stock rose from $16 to the $24 handle.AMRN was still a good trade but was buffeted by a downgrade. Amarin will present on Wednesday.

Genmark (GNMK) was down 5.92 % to $4.77 and with discouraging technicals. We hope to find out more on the Wednesday afternoon presentation . We still like it as a hold for an M&A candidate. Smaller cap stocks are not doing well in this market particularly those with modest revenue growth. Amarin is trading at 3.62 sales, has a QtQ Revenue growth of 32.3%, but EPS QtQ is down 2.8%.

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Illumina (ILMN) stock was down 3.69 % to $323.19 after a Q4 recovery from a Sep 2019 low of $260.Preliminary growth results were presented today at JPM with final inancials on 1/29/20.Q4 results were $940M in revenue a 10% QtQ gain with unofficial expectations of  9-11% growth in 2020.The sequencing base of instruments is 15,000. If you read back through our ILMN coverage you will find positive reviews when the stock was in the 20s. The mistake we made with ILMN was trading the stock rather than viewing it as a core holding. The long term potential for sequencing in basic research, population studies and clinical diagnostics was apparent.

Disclosue : Long :  AMRN, GNMK and TDOC;  ILMN.

 

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