Long-term readers of this letter prospered mightily from my addiction to biotech stocks, one of the top performing sectors in the stock market during the first half of last year.
Readers made three round trips in hepatitis C drug developer Gilead Sciences (GILD) in the past four months, adding 5.77% to the value of their portfolios. I believe the company’s blockbuster drug will become the most profitable in history. So do a lot of others.
Longer-term investors bought the Biotech iShares ETF (IBB) on my advice, which gained an impressive 45% last year.
They certainly were getting downright frothy by June.
No less a figure than Federal Reserve governor Janet Yellen has indicated then that she thought valuations in the biotech sector were getting “substantially stretched.” The Fed doesn’t single out stocks for commentary very often.
“Sell in May and go away,” turned out to be a brilliant strategy in 2015 because it got out of these stocks at all time highs with huge profits.
It was after that when the rot began.
It started when presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, sent out the Tweet that sank biotech, warning that price controls and international drug competitions would be a high priority in her administration.
Then the bad boy antics of Martin Shkreli were exposed, who raised the price of an AIDS drug, Daraprim overnight by 55 fold. Nothing like focusing a spotlight on a big open sore. Shkreli is now under Federal indictment for operating a Ponzi scheme.
Then Valient (VRX), a target of activist Bill Ackamn, imploded.
The industry has barely had an up day since then.
My favorite, Gilead Sciences suffered a 33% nosedive, while the Biotech IShares ETF (IBB) sank by a gut churning 40%. Favorite Celgene (CELG) gave back 34%.
Is biotech gone for good? Is this once loved sector headed for the dustbin of history to join coal and 3-D printing?
I don’t think so. Far from the truth.
Big institutional investors and hedge funds that had the wisdom to raise cash at the end of 2015 are starting to circle in on this faded beauty, making lists, and taking names. And (GILD), the (IBB), and (CELG) are at the top of those lists. (VRX) isn’t.
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