Does anyone know what is the current cost to borrow NWBO stock ?

The title says "Update" on DCVax.
Update means something different/new/improved/better to previous presentations.

What I can't get over is that this company went public 5 months ago, still in phase 1 clinical, and they have a $7B market cap!

Competition for Direct ?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/moderna-reveals-first-data-personalized-210000568.html

I'm on it.
:) :)

Excellent post!

I have no interest in knowing anything about this guy's opinions. I'm waiting for topline announcement so I can tell him exactly how many deaths he may be responsible for by discouraging enrollment.

Longfellow,
Are you sure it takes a year to do PFS adjudication ? I don't know, that's why I'm asking.
I was thinking...you put 3 independent experts in a room. Say they review 10 sets of scans a day (is that too much, too less?). For 331 participants, that's about 33 days or 7 weeks. We will be paying the CRO who will pay the experts. So they better show up, right ? Or are these people with regular jobs who can only devote a couple of days a week. Besides, not all would have progressed, so we could factor that into the time estimate.

Bingo Sentiment.
If LP said it's a "ginormous effort", then they must be in the thick of it, meaning they are well into the SAP development process.

But....our FDA is not the speediest horse in the stable.

Biosectinvestor, I realize I may be partly guilty of starting this debate about margin versus cash account. It's not that I was not aware that my shares were being loaned out. About 2 years ago, I got a letter from Fidelity asking if I could make my shares available for lending and they would be pay me 18% (annualized) for the loans. I think I might have posted about it back then. It was strange because my account was already a margin account. So I presumed they were inquiring about my Roth IRA. I didn't bother to respond because, to me, some sort of inflection point was imminent. In hindsight, if I had converted to a cash account then, I could have potentially earned quite a bit to offset my unrealized losses in NWBO. I feel it's not too late to do it now if we are looking at a 6-month horizon for topline. Fidelity will probably come to me again asking if they can loan my shares. I have an email in to them to clarify that they will in fact call-back my loaned shares tomorrow. I want this in writing.

Regardless, I think it is important of all investors to think about this because they are giving up a significant revenue stream while holding NWBO shares. If there is big demand of borrowing NWBO shares, why not make your broker share the lending income with you ?

To be fair, her comments were in response to a question about short-sales in general. I don't remember verbatim, but she explained how they had done a lot of work on this and how some of these margin agreements run 100s of pages long and some of the language on stock lending is buried deep inside and most investors may not be aware of this. I think the question may have also asked about naked-shorts. And I was surprised (and I'm still curious why) that she didn't go there at all. She just completely avoided any thoughts about naked-shorts.

The more reputable names such as Vanguard and Fidelity ensure strong compliance. Abuse is more likely with the smaller discount brokers.

Yes, you can reach a rep on the phone. But I was on hold for 15 minutes before I got the rep.

So I just acted on Linda's appeal. I called Fidelity and asked them to make my account a "non-margin" account. The rep asked me why and I said that you guys are lending my stock and contributing to the large short-position, and in any case I never use margin. He didn't hassle me and said that the conversion will be effective tomorrow.

Anyone with a Fidelity account can go to:
Accounts & Trade> Account Features> Brokerage & Trading > Margin. It will show you which accounts are margin-enabled.

I agree with the other attendees that the tone was generally upbeat and optimistic at the meeting. Despite my initial disappointment that we are now looking at a 3 to 6 month timeline (my personal assessment), I was comforted by the fact that, when they unblind and report topline, we will know that the regulators would have blessed the SAP, which will presumably include how they plan to assess PFS, which was a big worry for me.

I agree and I had those exact same thoughts. Most of us got only 1 question and LP was eager to close since we had gone over scheduled time. But frankly, I'm not worried about the data collection and should go pretty quickly. It's the SAP that I'm now worried about.

Everyone was civil; and the question about her share sales did not come up. I didn't stay for the after-meeting mingling. Maybe someone else may report on one-on-one conversations. I saw a couple of other note-takers. So you will likely get more details from others.

Other things that were discussed included right-to-try; combo trials (nothing new) - 2 scheduled to start, but they did not say when; stock-price manipulation - LP said there could well be "triple-digit millions" in short-position.

She wanted everyone to spread the word to move out of margin accounts and into cash accounts. Said most of the stock loans are coming from "you guys" around the room.

I attended the ASM (it was held a few blocks from my office) and essentially nothing new to report. A few quotables from Linda:

"Cannot be specific on exact timing of unblinding".

"SAP to be developed and submitted to regulators. This is a ginormous (her word) effort. Lots of complexity to SAP; lots of decisions to be made".

"Doing things in parallel where we can. Final data collection ongoing; CRO physically visiting 81 trial sites; some case files can be more than 100 pages long; every discrepancy generates a query; and every query needs to be resolved".

I had to wait for the last question:
Question: While the SAP is being developed, are you in active dialogue with the regulator? Will you unblind only after regulator signs off on SAP?

Linda:
"I'll answer the second part first. Yes, we will unblind only after regulators sign-off on the SAP. Note that it's not just the FDA, but a total of 4 regulators. On the first part, we cannot comment about any dialogue with the FDA. The SAP will be a formal submission to FDA for sign-off".

My takeaway: It seems the SAP sign-off by regulators is the biggest rate-limiting factor. LP hedging her statements about time-line because she does not know how long the FDA will take to sign-off on SAP.

Tax-loss selling seems to make the most sense, given that LP and Toucan booked big gains when they sold Cognate in 2018. Thus realized losses on NWBO stock to offset gains from Cognate sale.

She could technically buy the stock back after 30 days (to meet the wash-sales rule); but will she, and is she allowed to do that, being an insider?

It also could be a sale/gift to her grandkids. Who knows. Transfer now when the value is low so that it is well below lifetime gift-tax limits, than later when there is huge appreciation the stock and exceeds gift-limits and thus subject to taxation.

ASCO late-breaking abstract deadline is March 14, 2019. Could they be preparing for this ? If so, we get top-line before March 14th.

Notice that the words "several months of.." is gone from the language.

Hi Senti, I did realize it was Flipper's question. Sorry if I came across as punching at you. No (pun) (punch) intended :)

Agreed !! Clarity on the timeline is most important question.

It got everybody to 36 months, didn't it ? How is that not meaningful?

I, like many of you, am growing impatient and have been pondering the timing of the unblind. I've come to the realization that pressuring LP to unblind, against her best judgement when she has the most information and the counsel of the SAB (and no doubt LL's too), could potentially lead to the wipeout of my investment. I don't want her to take that chance. If waiting a few/several months if it increases the odds of my investment paying off, then by all means I'm for it. I can wait till June if that's what it takes so that I'm not left with a big empty egg in my brokerage account.

By the way, what is the significance of this 46 months that has been mentioned a few times by some posters lately ?

This is the right market environment to make a deal. I hope Linda seizes the moment. I fear the pitfalls that lie ahead in 2019.

Excellent Xenalives ! This says it all.

I agree and I hope so. But my instincts tell me to be wary. Those who think there is no corruption in the US of A, especially in the financial industry, who then influence government agencies, are living in la la land. I would feel better if she partnered or sold rather than trying to go through the approval process alone.

Just go back and see what happened to Dendreon when they completed their first phase 3. There was a massive short position and when the advisory panel voted overwhelmingly to recommend approval the stock price got away from the shorts. Then what happened ? There was a massive and coordinated campaign including some scientists who were working on competing treatments who wrote letters to the FDA not to approve, AF doing his usual thing, etc. The FDA then sent Dendreon back to do another phase 3. That's what happened and that's how the shorts escaped. All fact, no fiction.

That's why I think LP will either partner or sell DCVax-L when topline is announced. There is no way that the shorts will allow the price to appreciate significantly from this level if NWBO is still independent and alone. They will do everything they can. They have shown that they can do this before. I know that LP knows this.

I don't think the SEC effectively regulates FINRA, amongst numerous other shortcomings of the SEC. The SEC is captured by the FINRA because they have a nice revolving door in place. I do believe naked shorting is pervasive especially with vulnerable bio-techs. It's worth reading about Robert Byrne's fight with the financial industry on this subject. The system is rigged against the small investor. This I am sure about.

I have not trusted FINRA one bit. FINRA or Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority is the self-regulating organization for the financial institutions. They serve to protect their own. They are the ones who lobby congress and the SEC to keep the market-maker exemption for naked shorting using their liquidity argument, and then this is abused because there is no requirement to disclose naked short positions.

Frankly, at the very least, I think this exemption should be removed for companies with market caps below a certain threshold.

Now why would a guy from INSEAD come to Northwest Bio ?

Flipper, you haven't spoken in a while about the parallel UCLA trail and the information arm. There may be another - can't remember. Any new thoughts on these ? Will there be another update on the Direct phase 1? Will be interesting to see the 3 year numbers.

Question: How did LP get connected to Huawei ?
Answer: Think C. Black

That's excellent news!
It means you have a job for at least another year.
And we will continue to enjoy the wisdom in your daily posts.

Happy holidays !

If...if they have a potential partner lined up, then that entity is probably dictating the timeline. Being a newcomer onto the scene, such a potential partner will be inclined to have a bit more patience, say another 6 months or so (to ensure higher probability of success) than we long-suffering longs are able to afford.

Agreed and aligns with my thinking too. I'm curious why they haven't yet announced the date of the annual shareholder meeting.