The excitement and gaps of the post-UBS news has past and some relative calm has returned to GERN. Most of the chatter on the Internet boards is mindless, present company excluded, but they do provide a source of informative and perspective building articles, as does the Geron web site.
I have spent the last few days reading as much of the rational stuff as I could find. Much of it was over my head as science is not my field. But like Michael Murphy used to prominently display in his advertisements in Barron's, I too bought Amgen in the single digits, stumbling into it, much as I suspect he did, as opposed to some special biotech picking talent or insight. Is Geron in the low teens where Amgen was in single digits? It sure feels like it to me.
Most of you posters on this thread have a much better feel for the science here then I ever will, but it certainly reads compelling to me so far. My field is, or was, the law and one aspect of the UBS sound bites keeps ringing significant in my ears, the statements of Thomas B. Okarma, Ph.D., M.D., Geron’s president and chief executive officer. In an era when CEO's get sued for everything from getting a salary to not enough starch in the their shirts, Okarma pretty much said they have licked cancer. Yes, I know, not in so many words, but lawyers do not need "so many words," they infer and/or make them up if there is even a whiff of opportunity to do so. Why was Okarma so upbeat?
My take away is that he knows something that's even better then was presented last week, or at least may be even better. For as long as I've been in SI, about eight years now, I've played the biotech basket game, keeping anywhere from 4 to 10 biotechs in my holdings at any one time. For the first time ever, I'm considering the narrowing my current six down to one, making the big bet on a single company. Biotech is only a part of my portfolio, so it doesn't risk total disaster. But it does say that I know more about this one they any of the others, in fact have to rely on you guys for most of my other ideas. It also says if this one plays out it's potential, it's potential geometrically dwarfs all the other biotechs combined.
That's the bet. Comments welcome.
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