Monday, July 31, 2006

Still Around

I know I haven't posted for awhile; I'm in a wait and see mode. I haven't made any new trades since the J Crew purchase. The defensive stocks appear to be working right now in particular the big cap biotechs and pharmas. All of the major pharmas broke above their 200 day moving average and are now consolidating a bit. There's more to go for the pharmas. Even the biotechs are starting to behave well. For example Genzyme (Ticker: GENZ) just broke above its 200 moving average. And don't forget tech companies like Apple Computer (Ticker: AAPL), which also just broke above its 200 day moving average. Yep! I'm eyeing Apple Computer once again for a short term trade. Overall I like the tone of the market; there's definitely a shift towards the more defensive stocks. The following companies in my portfolio: MasterCard International (Ticker: MA), Invitrogen (Ticker: IVGN) and Qiagen (Ticker: QGEN) will be reporting this week and early next week. I think Invitrogen has the best chance for a big pop in stock price. The market is pricing in a so so quarter from Invitrogen, but I think any hint of good news will send this one up.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Big Cap Pharma - It's About Time

Looks like the big cap pharmas are emerging as the new leadership group. Many of the pharmas broke above their 200 day moving average on very strong volume. We had very good earning reports from Pfizer (Ticker: PFE), Merck (Ticker: MRK) and Schering-Plough (Ticker: SGP). Pfizer, Merck and Schering-Plough rallied over 4% today on strong volume.

I did a quick comparison of the pharma (Ticker: PPH) vs biotech (Ticker: BBH) ETFs. As you can see, a picture speaks a thousand words. Pharmas are the leader and the biotechs are lagging behind. I would start backing up the truck in the big cap pharmas.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Illumina - Wow...

Well, I’m back from vacation and I’m having a very difficult time getting back in tune with the market. One stock that just caught my eye was Illumina (Ticker: ILMN), which develops high through put genetic screening tools for the life science industry. They simply blew away everyone’s expectations with their latest earnings report and significantly raised guidance for the remainder of the year. They increased their earnings per share to $0.61 – 0.82 from $0.13 and increased revenues to $160 – 170 from $137.9 million. The stock jumped ~ 30% on this news to a new 52 week high. I’m very tempted to initiate a position in this stock. We’ll see…

Does this chart look good or what!?

Monday, July 03, 2006

A Vacation Break

Things will get interesting with the upcoming pre-announcements and Q2 earnings reports. There's been some good news recently with the big cap biotechs. Genentech received FDA approval for Lucentis, which is used to treat age related blindness. Celgene received approval of Revlimid for the treatment of multiple myeloma. There was an interesting write in the Wall Street Journal in which an analyst reported that Celgene generates a gross margin of ~ 97% from this drug. The company denies this, but if it's true, wow...

Anyways... I'll be away on vacation for the next two weeks. Enjoy the July 4th festivities!