Pretty funny. I was really nervous that my port (long decently valued therapeutic companies from Ph2 to commercial + a bunch of crap ("special shits") vs short some $XBI) would suffer on both sides when $MRNA shows a "good HR" (nvm valuation).
Thought I´d lose ~4-5% on a HR sub 0.6.
Just hope the drama ends and specialists can buy back their former longs now from me.
$TCGX bought a ton around 10$. AI says trust is ~10.07 so you make T-Bill +50 bps in a couple months and have a free call option on the deal receiving actual interest before closing.
I´m 90% sure we just saw someone from the IPO participate in the PIPE, sell their shares and taking some free money off the table.
Literally 0 reason to not be long this (sub trust) imo
$SLN I think it´s actually a decent arb at 19.57$. Even added some and sold a couple of 20$ Calls for a probably 10-15% IRR (depending on closing timing, estimating end of January for now). Most biotech folks will just sell to buy other cheap stuff, but I´ll let this ride on margin.
Lots of stocks out there where recent positive events / date have been almost or fully priced out ($INSM guidance / $PCVX bull case date / $PHVS bull case data / $DFTX data / $KYTX data)
But $CELC? Wow. Sat this one out through my general bearishness, bought back in now.
Not really having an idea here. Calling bottoms in biotech is even more foolish than usual. You can be off by like 1 week but easily 10-15%.
Today is especially weird as the weakness in "biotech AI" does not translate into meaningful relative strength
You usually want a period of prolonged weakness (6-8 weeks+) and the bottoming itself usually happens around a lot of puking and suddenly the thing is up 15%.
Becoming quite constructive by now on biotech (therapeutics - so more $BBC than $XBI where the "biotech AI" trade is more influential).
It´s pretty weird and we might currently be in one of these windows, where the wind already turned around, but it is still masked by weird flows.
1) AI stocks are weak, freeing up speculative capital for biotech
2) $BBC dropped 28.55% in not even 2 months, going from +48% YTD to almost flat.
3) Rates have come off meaningfully (and I don´t think nobody really cares about 475 vs 525 anyway?)
I don´t know what´ll turn it around, but I usually don´t focus on that. We rallied hard in 2025 even with VP at the helm at the end. I won´t get hung up on oil prices here, M&A, rates... It´s all a fugazzi. Buy cheap and you will make money.
Maybe will do a larger ticker thread today or monday depending on time available
@tradingbios@adamfeuerstein@gline „We could not subscribe to your offering because MRNA and SLS are up 10% on the day and so we’re actually selling the companies we like” is probably not going to vibe with everybody?
Always sad to see BioX contributors hurt, but there is a reason most professionals limit their shorts to maybe 200-300 bps (and most a lot smaller towards 30-50).
Time to finish the job, short $MRNA now 231ish for about 30% of target size. Waiting for potential data craziness and high 200s for remaining size. Probably not the best entry, but these shorts are hard to play, they can top in 2 hours and be down 20%, so have to get in on the way up partially. I usually like to look for a blow off top in these and we might get that with complete data set or not, who knows.
~Anniversary of $PTGX not getting bought. Funnily I’m on same vacation spot as back then, reflecting a bit on the stock. Stock returned +120%.
Plenty of stocks out there where maybe a 30% premium isn’t what we should ask for.
WeN yOu sElL MaRc, stock is lined down, mgmt bad!
$XBI First time in a while I see more interesting stuff I´m buying. Net exposure is not materially higher than ~6 weeks ago, but it went down to 20ish even. Laying low really helped a ton, off like 220 bps from ATH.
Random stocks / trades I like (too lazy to update old ones, still involved in most)
$PHVS $ANAB $ABVX $BCYC $AVR $RNA $SLN
Still not a tape full of opportunities, but it´s getting better.
1/x
Haven´t really been active lately. Didn´t open many new positions and often illiquid ones (or large liquid stuff where I don´t have any edge other than tolerability for buying stuff not going up every day) and monetized a lot.
Just wary of biotech in general currently and finding less "easy, low bar" special sits and historically that has not been a great indicator of forward returns. I´m at the lowest net and gross exposure for years, like 40% vs usually 90-120 (net) and also up bigly for the year
So I´m doing something of a "mass-update". Won´t mention everything, just stuff from the top of my head
1/x
It’s a bit weird how this is pretty “easy” in biotech. Most companies are simple projects and they have a kind of maximum value. 98%+ there is no flywheel and re-investments usually even suck.
Interesting thing this time is that my usual core longs (mostly special sit/cash shells/royalties/SOTPs) aren’t even flashing tons of buys. I like some stuff as a straight long and am getting longer every day.
But this is pretty unique as the largest opportunity are probably in Long Short.
I think most stuff works decent with a lazy hedge in XBI because XBI has been re-weighted heavily towards all the crap that ran.
BBC is down 20ish. I’d say situation is a bit more hairy still and not as simple as the sell offs in 5 years until 2025. OTOH plain and liquid stuff like ABVX INSM PCVX (lot more ofcourse) looks really cheap on an easy 3x peak slapping exercise (PCVX needs higher multiple)
Some names in there where I share the direction. I think for what you are trying to do (pick up the L/S everybody is blowing out off) it is quite decent. On shorts, not sure if TARS belongs in there thematically (not saying it is a L or S). On longs, you could check if the names have huge catalysts coming up very soon, hitting / missing could distort a lot for you. But maybe you are better off just running into these events and let fortune run its course.
But the baskets are hitting the themes you are trying to target decently imo