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Biotech / Medical : Biotech vs. Shorts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark L. who wrote (98)	8/3/1999 11:35:00 PM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 427

Mark, which biotechs would you consider good shorts? And why? Well there certainly is something to be said for short-term shorts of the spikes we get when people over-react to favorable publicity/hype. However, the day-trader types have now cottoned-on to this, and it is probably going to be harder for the rest of us to do successfully in the future. I've personally shorted ENMD and GERN for very brief periods. (I don't think it is smart to be short either of these for extended periods). I haven't been short much this year in biotech, mostly because there haven't been plays that jumped out at me. (This may say something about the state of the biotechs.) Of course there are plenty biotech losers that I ignore as they aren't easily shortable (by me anyway) because they aren't marginable. Last year I had good luck on the short side with ORG and the brachytherapy companies (like NASI). I've generally had bad luck with HEPH, which zigs whenever I zag. Last year I also sold calls on the BTK index, but fortunately abandoned the practice so far this year. However, this is starting to look like a viable strategy again. I hate playing in crowded shorts (like Zona) or in any of Asensio's shorts. Just too much misinformation flying around. Some of the first tiers are starting to look kind of pricey (like AMGN and IMNX) but you have to be pretty gutsy to short them given they may just keep rolling along. Bottom line I guess is that if you are looking for wildly overpriced shortable junk, I think you are better off looking among the dot.coms than the biotechs. Peter