Fermion's Biotech Investing (All Welcome)

I think your numbers are off but I don't have time to math it up right now as we need to cross Siskiyou summit before snow hits.

You can't just back out the contribution from HCV toward cash flow while keeping all of the extra sales, administrative costs, employment that contributes expenses toward that.

I had a good article on it somewhere that suggested Gilead was worth $60 to $65 if they totally divested HCV.
 
Sold my 1000 shares just now for $69 and bought 30 March $75 calls for $0.18

Assuming the calls turn into a total loss, the profit for this month will still be $2500

The lottery ticket is some news that pumps Gilead back to the $75 range which will make the $500 in calls worth $3,000 to $5,000 or more.

Biotech is gambling...just own it. :D
 
Everything in life has risks. I believe that if I always keep track of what my potential loss and gain are, I will do OK.

Still holding GILD. My other bets on biotech are ETFs, and they have been inching up. So far, so good.
 
Have not sold nor bought anything on biotech for a while, other than one covered call option getting in-the-money, and it got exercised. It's OK, as I still have plenty.

At this point, all of my biotech positions have good gains, some as high as 44%. Only Gilead still shows a loss of -10%, but overall my play in this sector is gainful. Of course it can turn on a dime. Higher risk higher reward, and vice versa.
 
Last edited:
I am holding EXAS and PULM. EXAS up 4% earlier today.
 
You made me curious, so I looked and FBIOX is up 16.75% ytd and 26.9% yoy.
On the other hand, I sold a 20% chunk in April 2014 at 173, which is closer to yesterday's 203 than I would have thought possible 3-4 months ago (the other 3 chunks I sold were higher).
I've been considering tiptoing back in. FBIOX has been very good to me over the last 15 years, but I tend to sell gains when it goes up 50-100% in a year.

NW-Bound said:
Everything in life has risks. I believe that if I always keep track of what my potential loss and gain are, I will do OK.

Still holding GILD. My other bets on biotech are ETFs, and they have been inching up. So far, so good.
Click to expand...
 
Biotech sector goes up some more today, while the S&P slumps after the big gain yesterday.

I just sold about 5% of my biotech holdings. The sold shares got a gain of 50% in just 2 months. No taxes due, as I do all trading in tax-deferred accounts. I try to be not too greedy. I still have 95% to sell later. I also wrote an option to sell another 5% at an even higher price at expiry just 2 weeks away.

I never sell all shares at once, or exhaust my cash all at once when buying. I am chicken, plus the trading cost is zero for me, so doing piecemeal is my style.
 
Last edited:
I sold 8000 shares of my Endocyte today at 2.36

It had dropped as low as $1.98 recently (very few shares at that level though). Earnings are tomorrow and maybe some news too. I am still holding way too many shares (22,000) but the risk/reward is still high. They should reveal that they have $3.10 per share in cash still, so the fact that shares are trading at $2.36 gives some measure of protection. I have however found another biotech who had $4 per share in cash and did a additional stock offering at $1.35! Scary. Not real sure why someone would not just buy up the entire offering, which was enough to take majority control, and close up shop, giving all shareholders back the four bucks. Seems too easy.
 
I tried to bring back the Valeant thread but I was not able to. So I'm piggy back this thread to say, I was about Valeant. Bill Ackman is finally got rid of his position on Valeant. I also think it's going to bankruptcy as well.
 
Last edited:
No idea, although it seems to be continuing it's decline, while executives continue to sell their stock and get more awarded as 'gifts', which is really not reassuring.

I did see a fellow with that written down as a stock he was interested in, and this reminds me to tell him it seems risky, and revenue is declining.
 
My EXAS is up $5.50 (25%) on its earnings report today. EXAS is a colon cancer screening test using DNA. They have penetrated 2% of the market and have a goal of reaching 30% resulting in $4 billion in sales.
 
Other than Gilead, I have two other individual biotechs. Most of my money in this sector is in ETFs. Thought about EXAS when you first mentioned it, but did not buy. I already had too much in this sector, and did not want to put in more money. I guess I could have traded GILD for EXAS, but did not.

At this point, I made money on all my biotech positions, some as much as 34% since I bought less than a year ago, and these more than made up for the loss on GILD.
 
I got rid of my IBBs a couple weeks ago. I did chase after it last year. It did great when I was travelling which is June-July time frame.
 
NW-Bound said:
Other than Gilead, I have two other individual biotechs. Most of my money in this sector is in ETFs. Thought about EXAS when you first mentioned it, but did not buy. I already had too much in this sector, and did not want to put in more money. I guess I could have traded GILD for EXAS, but did not.

At this point, I made money on all my biotech positions, some as much as 34% since I bought less than a year ago, and these more than made up for the loss on GILD.
Click to expand...

I locked in EXAS profits yesterday but will buy on any dip. Analyst upgrade from $30 to $40.

They have passed all FDA hurdles and are now on Medicare Advantage plans. They just have to execute. I see it replacing a colonoscopy for many.
 
Right now I have 3000 shares of Gilead with 30 Jan 2018 $70 calls sold against them. I am into the stock at about $62.50 counting the call premium. It is very nice getting a dividend check of $1560 every 3 months.

If the shares get called away in Jan, I will have made $22,500 in short term capital gain and $6240 in qualified dividends. A bit more than I wanted for ACA reasons but I will deal with that.

Not bad for a $187,500 investment.
 
Fermion said:
Right now I have 3000 shares of Gilead with 30 Jan 2018 $70 calls sold against them. I am into the stock at about $62.50 counting the call premium. It is very nice getting a dividend check of $1560 every 3 months.

If the shares get called away in Jan, I will have made $22,500 in short term capital gain and $6240 in qualified dividends. A bit more than I wanted for ACA reasons but I will deal with that.

Not bad for a $187,500 investment.
Click to expand...

Sometimes I have trouble following these threads, I thought you had sold your Gilead a few weeks ago and purchased out of the money calls?
 
Running_Man said:
Sometimes I have trouble following these threads, I thought you had sold your Gilead a few weeks ago and purchased out of the money calls?
Click to expand...

Get with the times man, that was SO last month. :)

I actually sold 20 of the 30 calls for a profit but kept 10 which ended up expiring worthless. At the low point of that, when Gilead was down in the mid $60s I did the 3000 share covered call thing. I didn't post about it because we have been hella busy buying land and excavators.
 
My Endocyte ECYT had a little pop today but really nothing special (10% move). The more interesting thing is the volume was 2.3 million shares vs the average volume of about 230,000 shares.

Next month they make progress update announcement at a conference. Lucy has pulled the football so many times here but maybe this time it gets kicked...
 
Endocyte still climbing. At $2.74 now, quite a bit higher than the $2.20 area it was a few days ago. Looking for $30 a share or so.
 
Ok, I just sold 6000 shares of Endocyte at $2.95. These had a basis of $2.20, so a nice $4500 locked in there. Still holding 14,000 shares.

Also still holding the 3000 Gilead shares and the Jan 2018 $70 calls I sold against them. The Endocyte trade is MUCH more profitable at the moment even considering it had/has around 20% of the money of the Gilead trade at risk.

Gilead pays about $1500 in dividends every three months though.
 
Sunset said:
nice, but does this mean you are less sure about it ?
Click to expand...

Not really. Their chance of making it big is probably lower than 1%.

At $3 they are approaching existing cash on hand. At $2.20 they were trading for $0.70 on the dollar.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Any McDonald's Shareholders?
Replies
10
Views
732
MichealKnight
M
M
Should I Sell?
2 3
Replies
69
Views
4K
l8_apex
L
M
Investing extra money and possible recession 2024
Replies
6
Views
1K
DrRoy
DrRoy
Tranquility Base
Borrowing Against Investment Portfolio For Home Purchase
Replies
15
Views
532
pb4uski
pb4uski
S
Just invested heavily in Treasury Notes
2
Replies
38
Views
5K
hotwired
H

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom