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Agreed, and like you I'll load up if its cheap enough.
It's blind faith versus equally blind disbelief.
Basically we wait, there's nothing more to say.
Hopefully Pyrr's real life alter ego will take up my challenge to publish on Seeking Alpha and stir up some news.
If not, you'll know how much he's willing to really stand behind his opinion.
Go on Seeking Alpha if you're so convinced.
Right, now your real world persona is still positive on DCVax Direct .
That's where you've staked your public reputation, on this stock being positive.
I'm going to lose financially if you come out at least in the short term because it is very likely the stock will get hammered.
I'm up over $16,000 in this stock this morning before the market opens. I could walk away with a nice amount of money.
But here's why I'm goading you anyway:
NWBO will have to put up or shut up on some of what you have been claiming here. They have a history of responding to attacks that hit too close to home.
Failing even that we'll see what you're willing to say in public versus what you're willing to argue here and that will be equally informative.
I'm willing to risk $16,000 to see what happens if you do publish.
NWBO is not a cactus and thus needs watering.
So now we're really looking at August/September for news?
I hope not.
Woodford will have to work overtime to overcome a news drought that long.
I was wrong about ASCO but nonetheless I still have the effrontery to suggest some news items that are at least possible before August/September:
1. News on EAMS from the UK. What is our status on the second part of the application?
2. News on HE in from Germany. By the way, can anyone refute Pyrr's claims that due to interference from the Phase 3 trial and restrictions on where product can be manufactured, HE is a dead letter from a revenue standpoint?
3. A limited partnership on Checkpoint Inhibitors on favorable terms with a Big Pharma. Ms. Powers said to ask about that again in a few months, hinting that something was in the works. Pretty soon it will have been a few months. But with no conferences...
I will take your suggestion under advisement.
I have over $50,000 invested in NWBO which is a significant portion of my investible assets.
Having lived my whole life in a hurricane prone area, I know the value of carrying insurance.
Most of the time you're just throwing your money away, especially given the high deductible.
For a CAT 1 or 2 you can just put up your shutters, clear your yard and be just fine.
But there's always that CAT 4 or CAT 5 that can come barreling through and no amount of preparation can help you if you get hit by the eye wall or smacked by one of the storm's spawned tornadoes.
In any case, thanks for the suggestion. I will give it some thought.
Well at least we're not as bad as CAR-T let as bad as Chemo or Radiation.
While being reduced to that argument is embarrassing it actually makes a stronger case than one might think:
We have some proof of effectiveness and amply proven lack of toxicity.
For patients with no other options, that would still be a good deal compared to SOC.
Let's not forget: this study is in patients on the doorstep of hospice. They may or may not have damaged immune systems from the SOC.
Imagine what we could with patients at an earlier stage of cancer.
Agreed, we need something definitive.
The reason this dropped is the lack of such news.
Pyrr will be proven right or wrong about retail running by June 2, 2015.
I think if he is right about no good news, retail will run.
If he is wrong about there being no good news, we go stratospheric.
It's that simple.
Lack of transparency has both costs and benefits.
I've admitted that being secretive has benefits.
I merely pointed out one of the costs: alienated investors, some of whom turn on the company.
Craving adequate information is not a matter of curiosity but of common sense.
Without it we are reduced to appeals to authority:
Cognate is in this so NWBO must be good.
Woodford is a smart investor so NWBO must be great.
All of that said, I am deep into this stock because what information I have seen is promising and because, despite my disagreements about some aspects of her style I do trust that Ms. Powers is sincere in believing in the future of NWBO.
Deleting it is like hiding measles with makeup.
The investor fatigue that inspired posts like the one you are referencing will continue until the underlying problem is solved:
Both longs and shorts on this board have stipulated that NWBO purposefully strings along investors time and time again, promising big news is imminent but then failing to deliver.
Eventually, some of these investors, like that former prominent long, reach their breaking point.
When that happens they either sell out or worse they go over to the other side.
That problem can be solved by releasing news "undeterred" as was already promised and by greater transparency all around.
If Pyrr's wrong we'll know by June 2nd.
We might know earlier.
I think Ms. Powers is smart enough to know that retail will react poorly if we get basically nothing new in the next 2 months. In that scenario we will indeed revisit the 5's.
But nonetheless $15.00 (or more) a share is unrealistic in the short run unless at least one of three things happens:
1. NWBO does a much better job of publicizing the data we've seen already plus whatever new comes out in the next 2 months.
2. The new data is so great that it publicizes itself.
3. We get that long awaited announcement on HE reimbursement.
You ignored the Hospital Exemption in your scenario.
I'm curious why you seem to think that HE won't be a significant factor for NWBO in the next six to eight months.
Burst past the $8.65 barrier!
Woodford's calling his biotech new fund Patient Capital.
Patience means a 3-5 year time horizon might make sense for him.
I think he's looking at more than a 3x to 5x gain though.
In my opinion that the biotech sector is going to blow up in the next five years and be comparable to Internet stock boom did in the late 1990's.
The full force might not come within the next 5 but you'll see the clear beginning of it.
NWBO is just one drop in a tsunami of new world changing companies.
Once people realize what is happening there, you could get a similar effect to the 1990's where everyone is buying biotech and even stocks in general at ridiculous P/E ratios.
When that happens, for better or worse fundamentals alone won't be dictating NWBO's share price.
Once NWBO gets up to that ridiculous P/E ratio, don't get greedy, but take what you have won and live your life.
Sell out most of your NWBO position in a tax efficient way. Keep a few shares for nostalgia's sake if you like. It will make it easier to part with the rest.
Then prepare for the biotech bubble to burst (because it will) by creating a diversified portfolio of dividend paying stocks and holding a lot of cash for the period after the crash.
The dividend paying stock let you stay in the market with less risk because few if any will go to zero and will pay you to wait for them to come back by those dividends (even if the dividend gets cut its okay).
I know this from personal experience from the crash of 2008. I had a belly of iron and sold nothing and kept buying in fact and was rewarded for it across the board.
The cash will help because the crash happens you'll have several months to bottom trawl and scoop up all of the good value stocks that fell out of people's pockets as panicked and ran away from the market. Cash is king in that environment. You will make a fortune in a few years just by buying low, holding for several years and then selling high.
I also know this because even with a little cash I just kept buying stocks through the darkest days of 2008 2009 when they were being sold for almost nothing.
But remember when you're rich and managed to hold onto that wealth during and well after the biotech bubble that it all started with your willingness to invest in little NWBO when most people weren't paying attention.
#1 NWBO was never going to skip ASCO.
I guess some people like Pyrr were even more pessimistic about NWBO's media and investor relations performance than I have often been.
The first rule for success in life is to simply "show up".
Whatever else you can say about their media strategy, NWBO has a good history of following that rule.
#2
Excellent point Vator.
A larger market cap looks good because one of the chief criticisms of NWBO has been that if our technology was so great, we'd have a bigger market cap. Well in a sense we do.
A smaller cap makes us look like we have more potential.
At the end of the day, its all how you want to spin it but at some point the facts are going to crowd out the BS.
At a certain point patients either get well or they don't, they either live longer with DCVax than SOC or they don't.
All the talk about market cap, short squeezes etc. are just ways to entertain ourselves until all of the nonsense is swept away by the facts, good or bad.
I'm making a big bet on good.
I'd say they can be counted, at least from a moral if not accounting standpoint!
Smith did a good job of pointing out some strong points we're so used to hearing about that we tend to forget how important they are:
1. DCVax has virtually zero toxicity and we've not hit the maximum tolerable dose
2. We are improving Direct dosing and can garner even better results in Phase 2 than we did in Phase 1 (which is the opposite of the normal trend with experimental drugs which tend to demonstrate weaker efficacy as you move from Phase 1 to Phase 2 to Phase 3).
3. Direct could be a strong candidate for approval on the basis of just the Phase 2 because we're helping terminal patients who have no other viable options. This could even happen if as few as a 1/3 of patients see the kind of benefits we've witnessed in the case studies.
While his overall purpose seems to have been to lower expectations about the upcoming conference Smith reminded me why I am invested in this stock for the long haul.
$8.65 is definitely the new barrier.
I picked up another 59 shares of NWBO at $8.64.
Anything in the single digits is (long term) a good deal so I won't be too upset if we keep bouncing off of $8.65 for the rest of the day.
DNDN's situation is why I'm impatient for HE to get moving.
We are not out of the woods yet and we need to make NWBO bullet proof.
NWBO should redouble its efforts to clear the invisible log jam and get HE moving.
With the Woodford funding in place NWBO has a stronger negotiating position vis a vis the Germans.
Getting HE off the ground in Germany will do two things:
1. It will bring in cash money to the balance sheet.
Cramer can play all the sound effects in the world then and it won't matter. A.F. can type all he wants until he gets carpal and it will avail him nothing.
Why? Because money talks and B.S. walks.
There is no substitute for real earnings. None.
2. HE will let us prove DCVax meets the Platinum Standard: the real world.
The Gold Standard, Double Blinded Phase III clinical trials are meant to merely predict what will happen in the real world.
How long can the FDA hold out if DCVax performs in Germany under HE as expected?
Think about it: No placebo, no blinding, perhaps no chemo and radiation, just a fair test of what it can do with people you can measure against the historical control.
We would both agree that launching a proxy fight would be as unwise as it is unrealistic.
If you fail, you waste everyone's time.
Success would be even worse.
Ms. Powers saved this company once already.
She is a woman of talent and vision with an eye for the main chance.
Ms. Powers will do more than gobble up the scraps from Big Pharma's table because she intends to give NWBO a seat at that table.
The glasnost comparison was a good one and happily NWBO is in a much better position than the Soviet Union.
NWBO is a rising power, after all.
Even when I disagree with their media relations strategy I trust the management with my money.
You may be right, and we don't have all the facts that go in their calculations ironically enough because of their limited transparency.
But here is what I know:
NWBO's management has the science right and they understand the importance of cost effectiveness and are taking both challenges equally seriously.
When our product goes to market it will save lives because it is both effective and affordable.
Whatever the effect on the short term share price, management's whole approach will be very good for all of us in the long run.
After all, the single digit price has given me an extra year to accumulate shares.
I might keep expressing frustration at the media and investor relations side out of natural impatience.
But I know that Ms. Powers' has an eye for the main chance and we are likely going all the way and even if we don't are ability to go all the way will mean our buyout will be enormously lucrative.
Sir Neil Woodford is only the most famous of the people who agree with me about where this company is headed.
Leaders hide positive stuff from their rivals and supporters all the time.
For example, China had many divisions of troops in North Korea right before they formally entered the Korean War. Having a multitude of "volunteers" south of the Yalu river was a positive thing for China. But China still sought to hide their advantage until the moment when it would be too late to avoid their overwhelming surprise attack.
In politics a political campaign with a piece of dirt on the rival candidate will sometimes hold onto it as long as possible so that they can release it right before voting starts, thereby leaving their opponent no time to recover. Once again, the news they are hiding is good for them but bad for their opponent.
All of that said, I would agree that NWBO should start being more transparent.
As Rkmatters said, Ms. Powers' standard of transparency would not pass muster at a Fortune 500 company.
NWBO has been on the NASDAQ for some time now and when it comes to transparency, it is time to start acting like it.
Maybe Etienne's an agent provocateur serving the shorts.
Using tools like him is a great way to gut the NWBO message boards. Youraunt serves a similar function over at yahoo.
It could be a good strategy for the shorts:
1. Drive out any longs with nuanced opinions.
2. Get those who stay to self-censor lest they be labeled shorts.
3. Encourage vitriolic ad hominen attacks and mud slinging.
Pretty soon you end up with a board divided in two armed camps where rational discussion and mutual respect are distant memories.
Why would anyone bother to do all of this?
Well it comes down to another question, Do message boards directly impact the share price?
Maybe, but probably not.
But regardless, the shorts certainly seem to believe that they do because they apparently invest money paying people to spread disinformation on them.
One could argue Etienne is an example of a more sophisticated strategy than we've seen the short's use before.
And if you now believe that Etienne is an agent provocateur, I have just demonstrated how insidious his kind of attack on other people's motives can be, whatever his reasons for making it.
Enjoy the under $10 price while you can. Financially, the longer it stays this low the more chance we have to load up. Emotionally, we want to make money now, even though its contrary to our interest.
Given how close NWBO is holding their cards, who is to say that a positive event won't happen unexpectedly.
If they can be late with stuff they can be "early" with things too especially, things like a partnership or HE reimbursement.
I'm weary of the management but not wary Austin.
Here's why I believe NWBO's management
I think Ms. Powers and her colleagues feel like NWBO is in a war to the knife with Big Pharma and the shorts.
Proof in support of this view of this is in Mr. Goldman's intemperate remarks in e-mails to various shareholders and even the remarks of the independent head of the DMC who said that he has never experienced attacks like these.
I believe they have some right to feel threatened because a lot of people have an interest in making NWBO fail.
Since they feel like they're at war, they're just pulling out a page from Sun Tzu.
Sun Tzu teaches you to hide your "shape" from the enemy.
When strong feign weakness, when weak feign strength.
When you are far away, appear near. When near, appear far away.
You get the idea.
The problem is, with a publicly traded company the only way to hide your shape from the enemy is also to hide it from your shareholders.
I'm not saying they pulled out the Art of War since that book is really just common sense and most people who feel threatened tend to try to control the flow of information whether or not they've done anything wrong.
Excellent, as long as options are a side bet.
Having only 6,000 shares of NWBO total, at an average buy price of the $6.20's I would prefer to add to my meager position with more shares when I can afford them.
I'm in the money over $12,000 so even when I sound grumpy I'm not.
Happily that tax refund check is in the mail and I think being able to buy more cheap shares with some of it will assuage my disappointment about the delay in the Direct data release.
If NWBO shoots up before the check arrives then just as well since I have put down most of the money I can afford to. That check is not going to weigh much against what I already have invested.
I wish you luck with those. I foreswore buying anything time sensitive with stocks because as others have said, the manipulation is 10x worse with options and the like than it is with regular shares.
Also you have to have a much better crystal ball for options to work.
Like most of us, I can predict broad trends over the next few years.
I cannot predict in what year, month, let alone week NWBO will finally turn the corner, go up to the double digits and stay there.
By buying straight shares I can afford to wait however long I want to.
I might get impatient and want the big day to come but in truth I have been using the delay to buy more shares.
Emotionally then I am worse off but financially I am better off with each week that day is delayed (provided it does eventually come).
I just bought 109 shares at 8.20 the other day and while we may go down a bit I don't think I was overcharged.
Thankfully the UCLA, the FDA the German government, the UK government and Sir Neil Woodford have made concrete expressions of confidence in the science of DCVax and that gives me confidence we are not also being deceived about that as well.
The craft beer remark was bait.
I knew someone would rise to it and you did!
But for everyone else here are some key differences between AF and myself:
AF asserts sticking needles in tumors causes extensive necrosis.
I don't.
AF asserts injecting grapefruit juice is as effective as DCVax Direct.
I prefer orange juice and think that's one of the dumbest remarks of the decade.
AF has all but demanded that NWBO shut up about Direct until the Phase 1 trial is over and doubtless thinks the same about Phase 2, once it gets started.
I think we should release a lot more information and have criticized NWBO for letting AF intimidate them into releasing next to nothing since the whole Dr. Buzdar dust up.
Aging the data is fine.
I know about aging because I brew beer, cider and mead. I know what happens when you try to rush things. Craft brews (beer much, much, less than cider and cider much less than mead) have to age after bottling.
Probably an appreciation for craft beer is the only thing AF and I can agree on! Everyone has to have one redeeming quality.
But if I promise someone to share some of my home brew with them, I can tell them when it will be ready and if I get delayed in getting it ready, then I tell them why, even if they don't ask me about it and even though I don't owe them anything because I'm giving it to them for free.
I like Linda Powers a lot and think she's an amazing person.
But she needs to correct herself promptly when she misspeaks and avoid over-promising and under-delivering.
Hyperbolic on the grilling but I seldom see these guys have to answer many questions or get corrected. I do think that the remark that dendritic cells "do not learn" was condescending. The questioner had to know LG was using "laymen's terms" which is exactly what LG said a second later.
Fair point, but she said all the data on Direct that they have by the end of March.
No one expects Ms. Powers to release data that hasn't even been generated yet.
But we were all expecting her to release whatever she had by the end of March and now you're talking September and LG is talking Spring/Summer of this year.
If she misspoke, she should just come out and say so. Some people are saying she meant the 55 patient info arm for L and said Direct by accident. If so that's fine, as long as she clarifies the matter.
Well, I properly define September as being in the Fall since if they're already selling Halloween decorations in CVS or Walgreens it isn't summer anymore.
But the way things have been going yes, at this point LG probably considers mid-September to be in the "summer" of this year.
I've gotten to a place where I don't care if they release all of the Direct data in December 2015 as long as they go on record, in writing about the date, and then when we get there, the data release actually gets done.
I don't care if the December conference is postponed by a blizzard you still do a PR with all the data on the date promised.
No excuses, no delays, just say "Here it is, Enjoy."
Mr. Woodford held NWBO accountable by investing another $40 million in the enterprise.
He is undisturbed by NWBO missing another benchmark and I take comfort in that. Yes, an appeal to authority to a logical fallacy but still, I think his indifference is meaningful.
That said, I'm frustrated as well but I am coming to accept that broken promises are par for the course with this company.
For instance:
Whatever happened to Ms. Powers' promise last year to remain "undeterred" about releasing DCVax Direct results despite Mr. Feuerstein's attacks?
I don't care who you are, NWBO's trickle of Direct information does not match up with any objective definition of "undeterred" release.
Also why brag so much about being able to start Phase II while Phase 1 is still going on if you're just going to squander the opportunity?
If you're going to delay starting Phase 2 until you have basically finished Phase 1 just be honest.
Ditto for HE in Germany and the early access in the UK.
They're really grilling Les up there! He's doing a pretty good job for a non-scientist. I'm glad to see a real extended Q&A and some genuine interest from the attendees in learning about the science behind DCVax. I like that he's honest about his limits and that he is referring them to NWBO's experts.
Most professional public companies aren't subject to the barrage of dirty tricks and attacks NWBO has suffered and continues to suffer.
Most professional public companies also lack such a large number of fully engaged shareholders.
It's nice to know that Mr. Goldman is just as frustrated as most of his shareholders have been at this situation.
Koman I know two ways PIII was adjusted for immune system damage.
First, more patients were added to the trial which naturally resulted in a delay in the trial of nearly a year.
This was the capacity to expand the trial that Linda Powers kept bragging about before pulling the trigger. Absent the immune system issue (which we were not fully aware of) adding patients to a blinded trial never made sense since it would just result in a delay. By definition, with a blinded trial you should never know you need to add patients...or so it seemed. But then this research came out about immune system damage, research that was not available when the PIII was designed and started.
The information arm has not been adjusted with additional patients to account for the compromised immune systems unlike the main PIII.
Second, in reporting the PIII trial results, FDA would allow NWBO to report on which of the patients had compromised immune systems and that this would somehow be taken into account. This is only fair since SOC is not necessary for DCVax but is only used first because the regulations require it.
Thus post-approval you wouldn't be using DCVax on patients with immune systems badly damaged by chemo and radiation since they would not have received those older forms of treatment in the first place. Some "legacy patients" who were treated using the old SOC would present of course, and you would try your best but are you going to blame the DCVax for failing due to the SOC it is striving to replace?
The Information Arm, to my knowledge did not separately track patients who had the issue with immune response highlighted in the study that forced the revision of the main PIII trial.
Had I been there in Germany, I would have loved to ask Dr. Bosch about that issue though. Q&A was way too short to cover all the issues, just as it always is.
Feuerstein's Distortion of the Information Arm:
Feuerstein forgot to mention that the information arm is being conducted by the same contract research organization that is doing the main Phase III trial.
Thus the only differences between the information arm and the main trial are:
The trial is not blinded.
The patients are sicker, on average than the participants in the main trial.
Unlike the main Phase III, this information arm has not been adjusted to account for the immune system damage caused by standard of care.
So, the last two points of difference actually make the results of this trial more compelling.
And I am not the only one to think so. I have a feeling that the Germans must have seen some early information on these patients before giving approval for Hospital Exemption.
Remember that we did not know the Information Arm existed until relatively recently but I am sure the Germans were getting that information earlier than we were.
Now we know that the Germans did not grant HE only on the basis of an old Phase 1 trial and that gives me even more confidence they are on to something.