Bill Cara

Three Biotech companies to focus on

Earlier this year, we ventured into the Biotech space. There has been much discussion to the point that I created a Biotech 50 list of candidates I will be monitoring for trade possibilities.

Today, I want to focus the discussion on three biotech companies, as a process of what I believe will help people do the research and end up learning faster about the whole group.

The three companies I selected for case study are CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP), Fate Therapeutics (FATE), and Moderna (MRNA).

I believe that when we discuss a fact/opinion of one of these companies, we should be focused on relevance and materiality rather than the obvious.

Baz responded to my request as follows: “Fate could really be good for explaining new cancer therapy using T Cell technology, as Crispr does not yet address cancer, and T Cell variations are what BMY and all the other big boys are into and have products on the market.. I don’t believe Moderna will focus on cancer for a while, although CureVac and BioNTech do now ( mRNA ) .. T Cell work is where all the money is today … CRSP is doing T Cell using gene editing … although nothing is on the market yet, Gene Editing will be right there with Gene Therapy… the readers need to know the difference, as these two methods will control most all future directions of biotech research”

I will add that Moderna is among the world leaders in searching for COVID-19 solutions, which is of primary interest to the public this year and perhaps for many years.

To start our case study, I point readers to the Finviz.com snapshot service, which provides concise up-to-date monitoring of company description, stock chart, financial data, and news and articles

https://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=341&t=CRSP,FATE,MRNA&o=ticker

An easy way to invest in the Biotech industry is through an ETF. The #1 performer over the past year and #4 largest by market cap is ARKG. See link below. ARKG can be used as a good performance benchmark for the individual Biotechs you do invest in.

https://etfdb.com/etf/ARKG/#etf-ticker-profile

The Stockcharts.com candleglance service is a good way to track short-term and longer-term price performance with the use of technical indicators like Money Flow or Relative Strength Index. For this case study, I added ARKG to the candleglance charts.

https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/candleglance.html?ARKG,CRSP,FATE,MRNA|D|0

In recent weeks, the majority of Biotech stocks have not performed nearly as well as earlier this year. For example, for May, June, July, and August, the Biotech 50, the average monthly performance was +22.46%, +15.03%, +2.82%, and -1.16%. Through the first week of September, the performance is -8.50%.

For the same months, the average monthly performance of the three case study stocks was +27.81%, +8.00%, +7.61%, +4.45, and MTD -10.10%. So, each month, this group of three had greater investor support, but the broad market sell-off this month has hit these three stocks harder. I will be watching for a timely entry.

Our purpose with this case study, however, is not to recommend timely investments, but to share facts and opinions that will help us educate one another in what is happening in the Biotech space that is important, not only to society but to our investments in future.

I hope you appreciate the benefits of focused study and that many of you will participate.