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50 cent spike in IMGN a few minutes ago on very large volume, now giving back a bit.
As always, it's hard to tell what trading thesis motivated the put trades - could be speculative bearish, hedging, or income generation.
Very squirrelly action, so I've stayed out for the time being.
Thanks Dew. I'd decided to wait out the opening pop, which turns out to have been a good thing.
VRUS.
The exercise and hold indicator at work?
There is so much pessimism around MON, that it may be profitable to look very carefully at it after earnings this week. This is end-of-the-world stuff - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05monsanto.html?partner=yahoofinance
I was in briefly in April around 68, but got stopped out pretty smartly.
I haven't had PPHM on my screen for some time, so I'm not familiar with how it trades. 211k shares on the bid. Is this an aberration?
Is there evidence that she would reverse the Workers' Party shift to the center begun under Lula? (There may be, I'm asking.)
Her Marxist guerrilla days were forty years ago. All in all, she sounds pretty centrist, not a Chavez or a Correa - but that doesn't mean I'd be a buyer of PBR. (All I have in Brazil is BRF)
Great piece. Too bad the subject is not that crisp.
WSJ - what bits?
FDA Seeks More Data on Teva Copy of Amgen's Neupogen
By THOMAS GRYTA
NEW YORK--The U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined to approve Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.'s application to sell a copycat version of Amgen Inc.'s Neupogen, effectively delaying any launch of the company's first generic biotech drug sold in the U.S.
The Israel-based generic drug giant said the FDA requested several bits of additional information but didn't require additional clinical trials to complete its review. The application for the drug, called Neutroval, was filed using a traditional approval pathway for a biologic drug, but it is sold as a biosimilar to Neupogen in Europe under the name TevaGrastim.
The delay may show the complexity of getting such medicines to market, including the scrutiny coming from regulators. Teva's FDA submission, originally made in November, included results from five studies of the drug. It was approved in Europe in September 2008.
A Teva pokeswoman declined to comment beyond the company's statement that said it "will work with the FDA to determine the appropriate next steps" for the application. Amgen officials weren't immediately available for comment.
Biosimilars are as close to a generic version as is possible for complex biologic drugs. Although a regulatory pathway for their approval in the U.S. was included in the March health-care overhaul, the FDA has yet to issue formal guidance on that pathway.
Rather than wait, Teva filed for approval using a traditional application route with supporting clinical data and has said it will do the same with other biosimilar products.
Meanwhile, Amgen has filed a patent-infringement claim in federal court to block the move. A trial date hasn't yet been set, and Amgen is widely expected to file for an injunction to block any launch by Teva if the FDA approves the drug.
Neupogen, which is used to prevent infections in chemotherapy patients, brought Amgen U.S. sales of $901 million in 2009. The company had total product sales of $14.4 billion last year.
The main European patents on Neupogen expired in 2006, allowing the sale of biosimilars, but Amgen has U.S. patents covering the drug until 2013.
Approval of Neutroval would be the first biosimilar challenge for a U.S. biotech company on native soil, providing some insights into the market's receptiveness to such products.
Like biosimilars in Europe and those expected in the U.S., Neutroval would be a branded generic. That means it couldn't be substituted like a traditional generic and would be actively marketed by Teva.
Amgen has played down the effect of biosimilar Neupogen on the market where it is sold, noting that the use of the drug is offset by continued conversion of patients to Neulasta, a longer-acting version of the drug. The company recently said that Neupogen biosimilars had captured just 4% of the international market as of the end of June.
Scorched earth policy, eh? Plausible, sadly.
I'd sold down much of my MNTA because the disconnect between what the shorts are seeing and what seemed evident to me was too glaring. Just went back in at 14.97 based on the script numbers.
WSJ
McDonald's May Drop Health Plan
By JANET ADAMY
McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.
The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world.
Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn't loosen a requirement for "mini-med" plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans.
The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits.
While many restaurants don't offer health coverage, McDonald's provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.
Last week, a senior McDonald's official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain's insurer won't meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.
McDonald's and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.
Democrats who drafted the health law wanted the requirement to prevent insurers from spending too much on executive salaries, marketing and other costs that they said don't directly help patients.<snip>
I'm selling stuxnet licenses if any one is interested.
Wasn't jbog talking about COG, not share?
EOY 2011
You do mean next year?
That was quite a sales job - they (L&H) cost me some money, but thankfully not too much, as I remember.
Seemed like a good idea at the time, just needed a bit of honest execution.
We admittedly don't know what the final FDA decision on Lorca will be, but there have been multiple signals that the Agency looks on these drugs at least in some part as cosmetic drugs as much as meeting the medical need of obesity control. Hence a high safety bar. I had some VVUS but sold months ago because of this danger.
VVUS would have been a good short this afternoon. I had decided to wait until the end of trading, but by then it had already deflated, and might not even have been borrowable - labeled "Hard To Borrow" at Schwab.
Murphy must indeed be a thrill seeker.
(And if his daughter has inherited his brains, she can forget about applying to Harvard.)
How many people here think John Chambers’ proposal has a chance to make it through Congress?
Be serious. From a legislator's perspective, cui bono?
Or maybe it is a bad sign of things we aren't aware of.
Well, yeah. I have wondered for some time whether there isn't dark matter in the outer reaches of the galaxy, unknown to us mere mortals, that is holding down the price of the stock.
From all the evidence available to us, it should be above 20. It isn't.
Does somebody know something we don't know?
The trouble with maximum pain theories -
There are fewer than 1900 open interest on the 15 strikes - 190,000 shares. Would a trader use the firm's capital to move a stock to the exact strike price to make a dime or two on 190,000 shares?
At 250 calories per serving for the muscle formulation, it should have an effect on some part of one's anatomy!
Is there any price at which you might be tempted to buy ARNA (remembering that Jack Lief comes with the deal)?
Trading at 2.25
I have trouble getting my mind around a million grams - but a thousand kilos, one ton, yep, that makes an impact!
The fact that an industry group thinks it can solve a problem by changing a name is troubling, though. But that's a whole other issue.
Recent news has pinpointed an alleged obesity gene and hormone
What's most interesting is that this gene seems not to have existed 100 years go.
What's his name, so I can follow him? Being your friend is a recommendation, IMO.
Thanks, I was worried I'd slipped another gear somewhere. Must be delay between submission and publication.
Thanks. Must have been a compelling webcast. Wish I owned more, and almost did but was bamboozled by the tepid reaction. It was actually red for part of the morning.
(How come you know everything? You seem to have access to data from every source at every and all times. Are you human?)
Did anybody find the trading in VRTX to be interesting today (interesting meaning interesting, not necessarily sinister)? After last night's telaprevir results it woke up to a rather sluggish reaction and meandered along until around 1430 when it spiked on lowish volume, then about 1520 it began a serious 50 cent run on very good volume, well above average. Why the delayed reaction, unless there was other news that I missed?
I own a few, in the shoebox, not trading sardines.
And you wonder why the normal person has lost faith in this market?
Another reason today is to see ORCL up 5% because it hired a schlemiel who hits on contract employees from a position of corporate power.
"shorts" is a substitute word for refusal to accept the message the market is sending.
Thanks for that very helpful background on the oral thinners vs lovenox.
Well, something very weird is in play.
Weren't you positing a situation where a Teva employee, knowing that a Teva approval was imminent, shorts MNTA stock? In that case he/she would not be acting on any non public information relating specifically to MNTA. All the employee needs is the very public knowledge that MNTA has a Lovenox generic.
You also may become aware of material, non-public information about customers, competitors or business partners of Teva
in the course of your work.
Things they are a changin. Pakistan just hit a once in a millennium event.
Talk again after Earl and Fiona drive by without blasting me too hard.
It may be totally daft on Sanofi's part, but it seems to me that an SNY scorched earth policy (to borrow Zipjet's phrase) has some explanatory value for the price action. It's simple, and I'm a fan of William of Occam.
Lets not forget that we also once thought that Citi, AIG, etc were bulletproof 3.5-4 years ago.
I do indeed remember, especially shorting C and losing money in the high 40's.
If you're positing a situation where there are no buyers of maturing short term Treasury obligations, then we are indeed at the end of the world.