I see from the initial description
of the thread that I'm way over the line of
what consitutes being on topic, but maybe you
will throw me a bone.
Mike, welcome to my thread. I allow anything to be posted on any subject, except posts related to any of the Beatles' movies.
As for biotech, I too got blindsided by ISIP and although a very small position, it hurt more in the ego then in the wallet. It did inspire me to look at the leading Biotech funds, thinking that the only way to play this sector is the shotgun approach. Most of the funds outperformed the S&P in 1999, I think the best was up about 60%. My own half dozen biotechs are modestly up for the year, a double in GZMO and NBIX balancing the 50% haircut in ISIP. The thing is, I spend quite a bit of time reading about them all, reading the SI threads and other online sources, listening to the Biotech gurus that seem to understand the science and of course, monitoring the charts. A fund would certainly free up more time for hassling people on my thread. Now I am not that big a fan of diversification (boy, that's a can of worms to open up here, isn't it?) but it actually does make sense in biotech as it seems that owning less then a dozen biotechs is just not sufficient to cover the gamut of science out there and you certainly do want to have a sizable position in each little GERN, just in case. Although all the top funds I looked at did have sizable positions in ISIP as of October 31, the implosion did not seem to hurt their net asset values very much. Which is also the downside, the occasional explosions won't help much either. It's never easy.
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