This is why i'd rather be early even with a smaller stake than otherwise.

Seth Klarman: the margin of safety has little to do with the precision of the intrinsic value calculation. pic.twitter.com/tIxGPnrVfN

— Ivan Maljkovic (@ivan_brussels) October 7, 2017

mnkd lol. i have no idea why it rockets up but it is comforting for me to be reminded that certain behavior of mr mkt is quite dependable and can be counted on to happen regularly and in due time if one is nicely setup beforehand.

tx, i saw that on twitter a few days ago.

it nicely recapitulates what more or less all serious tril bettors "should" be aware of anyway. i didn't occur to me that tt-621 is for mono and tt-622 is for combo with pd-1s.

Dew, do you know if Mylan generic is substitutable with copax or not ?

I don't know what wsj says but the latest issue of the economist to which i have a sub with the cover of a panda and a question of "does china play fair" does not go as far as the wsj position.

all east asian tigers, notably s korea and japan, have at one time or another have imposed unilateral restrictions on imports while supporting native heavy and technology sectors with industrial policy. i mean it makes complete sense to me. how in the hell can they emerge as industrialized nations otherwise ?

take for ex boeing dreamliner mfg. do you expect china to just keeping buying high tech imports like airplanes and cars etc ... and exporting cheap stuffs to walmart forever ? or to just keep assembling iphones for apple ?

i don't excuse the IP theft from the chinese. but otherwise than that, industrial development policy and gvt support for new industries are the way to go. it is so sad that for us electrical cars productions , us companies like GM has to outsource their battery mfg to s korean companies who have the complete backing of their gvt.

I cut bait on adxs a while back at around 6 booking losses. i let go of the last 500 today.

imo the time horizon,whether ST or LT, is a very significant factor to the height of the roof. i rarely if ever do options so my estimate of roof height is not appropriate for option players.

be as it may, imo tril is at least a ten bagger from these levels. i remember much higher estimates from Peter and those were from when the pps was in the teens.

the factors most important imo are related to a combo with PD-1s: first is efficacy which in the combo has to more than the low 10s to 20s of responders for PD-1 in general (at least a double of that level hopefully), manageable tox level and durability of response. but there are interrelating issues. if efficacy and response is high and durability is say twice longer than pd-1 alone, tox issues become less front and center as in all cancer treatments.

if all go well, hell forget the roof ,think sky lol. that is why i am sitting on a 40% loss in tril, at times not long ago , higher than that even. peter said it is a genuine lotto ticket and i agree and i like to bet on lotto tickets lol.

Tril, looks to me there probably will be updates for ASH2017. any sign of efficacy in the keytruda combo and it will go for the roof.

a swallow does not a spring make. it would be interesting to know the real stats of how many cheap stocks actually become winners.

imo such stats are to come by as they directly contradict the making a living of a vast number of operators in the stock mkt.

Tx Dew. I actually follow JN on twitter as bionap not because i believe anything thing he said but because for a long time i have noticed most of the stuff he flogged have a very low price. i am suspicious of that style. i have always wondered if there are truly so many forgotten "biotech values",genuine gems, in the garbage dump.
him and jason chew same-o same-o. and the chutzpah they have to charge for their opinions lol.

i don't do ST trading based on BTD but i know lotsa people do. i try to keep the spirit of clear understanding of how the drug works and what i am waiting for now is safety. fgen is clearly in that class.

i disagree because of small trial size. but if you so firmly think, you should have no hesitation to add at current level.
with the recent dilution, myok will be able to conduct confirming p3s and get approval.

i was thinking exactly along the same line with fgen lol

"Exactly. FGEN's roxa falls into this category too."

and if for whatever reason i want to go into early on one of these "biotech values", i'll put in a small initial stake and pay up and add slowly as more data and evidence accumulate. i have learned it is a good process to pay for derisking.

that sort of process fits with my psychological profile.

This may be of interest to you.

https://tinyurl.com/y9cwknql

"The new case involved a Frenchman whose brain damage, suffered in a car accident, left him completely unresponsive and unconscious, known as a vegetative state. He became minimally conscious, responding to some signals from the outside world, after a month of having his vagus nerve — which runs from the abdomen to the brain, where it has numerous connections to regions that the researchers call “a hot zone for conscious awareness” — stimulated with a device implanted in his chest.

Brain imaging and electrical recordings of brain activity (EEG) showed changes that likely account for his improvement, scientists led by Angela Sirigu of France’s National Center for Scientific Research reported in Current Biology.

UCLA psychologist Martin Monti, an expert on consciousness who has used ultrasound directed at the thalamus to awaken a coma patient, said the French study seemed solid but somewhat vague on how much the patient improved. “They just don’t make it very clear what exactly he recovered,” Monti said, such as “just some small sign of consciousness or [whether he] could, say, blink eyes in response to command.”

Heck, who can argue with that ?

I was one who piled into enta in 2013 even as the pps was falling prior to the P3 results and as luck would have it, sold out at a reasonable high level before the script number trend for abbvie/enta became clear.

i also would agree with you regarding rvnc, although i am dilly dallying about running up my stake because i think i still have time before yr end 2017 P3 results.

however, going back to enta now wrt to NASH, does the data/results to date for edp305 give you enough of a clear understanding of its MOA ?

one thing i have always like/respect about enta is lack of mgt selling unlike other biotechs . they indeed are taking the same risk as i do buying their shares. i can't really ask for more than that.

thanks Dew. Really Baker Bros = spray&pray mas o meno, amen and lol

Baker Bros sold out MRTX in 2016. i never understood the reason the big deal some retailers make about their buys/sells. BB apparently have no special claim to prescience.

lol. plse goes from 35 to 10. when something goes down 50%, it takes 100% up to be whole. so if plse goes up 40% today, really it only makes up 20% of the loss, whatever loss it was.

20m-30m to robert dugan is probably peanuts. he made a lot selling pharmacyclics.

didn't pcyc went from 1$ to 200$+ ?

i added 2Ksh today .also i have noticed neff is reducing his selling frequencies from 3 or 2 times a month back to once a month like before.
may be that means something lol

OT: Put these charts on your wall.

i like the valeant chart the most (lol) since everything about it disgusts me even though it is legal.

also a good reminder to myself why i don't bother with charting.

https://pensionpartners.com/put-these-charts-on-your-wall/

Dew, I have seen this movie before with Novo and GBT.

https://www.streetinsider.com/Hot+M+and+A/Novo+Nordisk+%28NVO%29+in+Bid+for+Global+Blood+Therapeutics+%28GBT%29+-+Reuters/12645390.html

my objection to the BS at the time was that gbt P3 won't see headlines till YR17. It is too early for a fair price to be agreed between the parties.

and the same argument holds today. there is no approval for oma yet. How much would a buyer willing to pay ? and if prtk is so eager to sell before approval, how much confidence they have in their own data and if I am a buyer I would be asking the same question lol.

nevertheless mr mkt behavior is rather comfortingly predictable to me !!

oh i wouldn't write it off totally. tax reform is a complicated matter in general. i recently read an opinion describing the two opposing tax reform factions within the rep party. the tea party, representing the little people, prefers "expensing" method whereby middling sized biz can expense right away all capital expenses. big biz , traditional patron of the regular rep party before trump, prefers a simpler rate cut.

imo since most jobs are being created by middle size cos anyway, i would go with the tea party "expensing" reform.

i was never much a believer in trickled down economics anyway. everything i read points to the majority of new jobs in the last 25+ yrs being created by middle size enterprises anyway.

hey jon, thanks for the additional details.

(willful) factual ignorance is the mother of conspiracy belief imo.

as a speculator it behooves all of us to know as much about mkt mechanisms as possible.

thanks. i forgot that the 2$ the squid earns in this case is for finding and lining up willing buyers at the set price. there is no implicit requirement for the brokers to support the price.

after all if the squid has done its job well, the mkt price shouldn't fall (if it does) too far from the offer price. i am sure these things go into building the reputation of the brokers impacting future deals.

well, the way i understand the shoe is like this: so the squid (and friends) is supposed to sell 8 Msh fgen at 40.75. like you said, the squid has already lined up parties willing to buy the new printed shares which go straight more or less from fgen printing press to their new owners. that is how the sqid earns its fees from the process.

in most cases of secondaries however, the mkt price will fall below 40.75 and to prevent the mkt price from sinking too much below 40.75 (which will piss off the new owners and tarnish the squid reputation lol) the squid (and friends) will try to support the mkt price through direct intervention in the mkt. but these brokers have to be mkt neutral. after all they don't want to be stuck with an inventory of fgen sh. so to be mkt neutral, they buy to support and short it also. how they do it both , i have no idea.

thus if the brokers do need to even up their shorts, they use the shoe.

Rocky a question .isn't the shoe a protection for the brokers. they don't have to buy back their short shares (at mkt price) during their process of trying to keep the price at the offering mark of 40.75 ?
that is my understanding of the shoe.

OT: Uber anecdote from matt levine of bloomberg.

Benchmark (VC) wants to kick tralanick off bod. 2 other VCs want to kick benchmark out of uber altogether and buy benchmark's uber shares.

but then :
"other shareholders have criticized Benchmark and are trying to kick it off the board. The shareholder leading that effort -- Shervin Pishevar of Sherpa Capital -- is also one of the potential buyers of Uber stock, but his proposal is contingent on buying out Benchmark's stake and getting it off the board.

Actually I said that the investors weren't looking to buy shares from Uber, but there is a small, monumentally dumb exception to that: Two of the investor groups want to buy shares from existing shareholders at a discount to Uber's $68.5 billion valuation in its last funding round, but "would also purchase a small amount of new shares at Uber’s current valuation to keep the company’s value propped up on paper." The idea is that, if you raise money at a $68.5 billion valuation, and then shares change hands in the secondary market at a $50 billion valuation, and then an investor buys like one share from the company at a $68.5 billion valuation, then, what is the problem, your last funding round was at a $68.5 billion valuation, same as the previous one. You've never done a down-round! Your valuation is still $68.5 billion.

Obviously it would not occur to a public company to even try a ruse like this: If you sell stock at $68.50, and it trades down to $50 on the stock exchange, then selling one share to an investor at $68.50 will not convince anyone that your price is "actually" $68.50. The price is the price where shares trade. But if you are private, I guess you can convince yourself that this trick might work."

no comment. the wonders of free mkt lol.

xavier my boy you are wrong about afmd being dead money. its hodgkins lymphoma monotherapy trial was being delayed at the insistence of the german hodgkins group to include patients pretreated with both brentuximab and pd-1 agents.

and afm113 combo with keytruda may have some data at ash2017. imo afmd is as certified a lotto ticket as tril. it helps my cost is around 2. so either it is going to be 0 or 20. if that ain't a lotto ticket, i don't know what else is lol.

i must also say that i did (try to) read afmd published scientific papers and to my (very) limited understanding, it is legitimate research. but whether the thesis will be proven or not, that is scientific uncertainty and i have to accept it.

thank you for your valuable input. glpg is already valued at 1.5Xfgen mas o menos. both are partnered with their most advanced drug and now with IPF data from both and fgen being more solid and advanced than glpg regarding IPF, is the extra MC glpg over fgen justifiable ?
i have no issue with the integrity of both mgts unlike some other biotech values lol.
also, fgen roxa although partnered, seems to me much more valuable potentially due to the "china factor" lol.

so did you trim on Tue the day after pam results or the last 2 days. if i had to pare down my stake for a reason like yours (with which i agree 100%) i wouldn't do it yesterday or today.

instead i have been adding. i have no idea why the general mkt is tanking. maybe because of saber rattling about Kim Jong Un lol. if indeed it is , i would be buying which i did.

for the simple reason that in the way i look at the world and people and people's behavior, it is obvious to me the rich and powerful have the most to lose in case of hot air war turning into real war. and both Kim and DT have plenty to lose, especially Kim, not even counting the hapless and unfortunate south koreans as collateral damage.

well i read the cc transcrpt and 2 things stood out for me. it's a long time between now and 2H18 when they have data/results for EMA.

cash levels are low. they may need to dilute between now and then. i hope blcm waits for bp04 before doing a dilution.

also for us mkt, AML is a tough nut to crack but apparently they saw something to warrant the change of direction.

good thing i pared down my stake to 2.2K sh a while back. no adding at this level for me even though i am down 25%.

fgen -11%, so far mr mkt is doing what he does best.no surprise here. if it goes back to 40, i'll add some more. i don't mind paying for derisking, in the long run that is lol.

i believe in hi tech shorts (not shorting hi tech stocks), ie using satellite imaging data to estimate the increase/decrease tanker traffic for energy betting long or short, or trucking traffic in and out of warehouses to estimate business levels etc...

exactly the kind of shorting process that may give the shorter a possible positive winning edge but definitely out of reach for the piker like myself.

which means the fat lady has not definitely sung yet on pam. to garner and get a good pam partnership, fgen will need more solid data which means large p3ns and obviously stat sig resutls. supporting pam results in pancreatic cancer wouldn't hurt either.

fgen did a dilution back in Apr2017 for roxa in china. in hindsight it is a hell lot more worthwhile and profitable (for me) anyway to bet on fgen and others like enta than to stick around waiting for amrn to recover. i have made back all i lost on amrn (which was a considerable amount) and then some thanks to dew and biomaven (aka peter). i am ever so sorry i couldn't back up the truck on fgen on the fri brexit passed and it hit a low of 11 or something like that. i was in a remote onsen (hotspring resort) in japan at the time and even though i woke up early at 3 am japan time fido didn't let me put in a buy order. it turned out i need a mobile fido app on my iphone to buy and i didn't have it at the time.

along the way i have learned a few things for my process book. there are some good bets wrt to cheap priced stocks but most are not. i am willing to stay and take a 50% loss currently on tril but not stick around and wait for amrn to recover if ever imo.

it is not a bad idea to pay for derisking (lol a big mouthful indeed); i realize there is good derisk and bad derisk and one can only tell the difference in hindsight. whatever the obstacles may be to buying high after good data , most of them are caused by personal psychological factors imo and there are quite a few excellent tips from successful professional traders on how to mitigate and alleviate those tendencies.

jbog, that is funny !!! lol

Short of a BO or partnership of some kind, rvnc definitely needs to raise $ next yr. My guess is that Brown is waiting for Q4 top lines data to dilute at high price. I do like his conservative attitude when it comes to secondaries.

also, using ATM to pay bills is a sign of confidence in data perhaps ? lol

i listened to yesterday Aug3 CC and the CFO terminated her spiel without mentioning how long the $ runway is. Usually they do. To me it is a subtle sign they need to dilute. No ifs and buts, just when.

Also the "analysts" never questioned about when the dilution will happen.
They do know on which side of the bread the butter is on lol.

er if mr mkt is logical how would i make any profit ? lol

what i do is that i keep track of my expectation of mr mkt's behavior which i use to time/book my profit/loss and revisit those decisions later to see if i was correct or not.

one recent ex is clvs. i used to be in clvs heavy about 1.5 yr back with 6-7 k sh when it was selling in the 90-110 range. well when it came out that clvs was not forthcoming to the retailers about roci AEs, it crashed and all my profits vanished. i didn't lose money but my profit was considerable with my avg being around 40.

so this time around, when i bought clvs back around 1 month before ruca news last june2017, i only bought back 2Ksh because i have lost trust in mgt.

i also guessed that mgt wouldn't try to pull any monkey trick because this is their last chance. still the last round left a bad taste in my mouth.

and so when clvs jumped from 55 to 95, i sold at 93 and called it good. and it fell back to the 80s in due time and then it jumped up to the 90s a few days ago due to azn mystic result and then it is back to the low 80s.lol

i keep these episodes in mind to continously update my speculation process, especially with cancer bios.

i did the same things with bpmc. after i sold out of akba , i bought in bpmc at 40 down to 34 and when it hit 56, i sold 90% of my stake down to 1.5 ksh.

i don't see any reason why it should go from 35 to 56. some people mentioned loxo gain as a backwind for bpmc. ok, but results are a while away so i moved to the sideline.

i'll be back for ash though.

for bios like rvnc, earnings are immaterial at this stage. it would be more important to know how the cash situation, what is current burn, expected future burn for commercialization, how much they have left, when is dilution etc ...

the weakness could be due to expectation to imminent dilution. what mr mkt is looking for imo is detail(s) on p3 enrollment, timeline for data release and submission/approval and also commercialization.

a bonus if any sort of partnership is mentioned. mr mkt loves that stuff lol. although it would be a bad mark in my process book if rvnc mention any partnership before top line results at the end of yr.