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

To: tom pope who wrote (2676)	1/24/2001 9:49:56 PM
From: scaram(o)uche	Respond to of 52153

Cramer on BTX BioTime? It's good to know that he's focusing on a given company. Here's his most recent report card on the sector as a whole......... Message 15134733 Message 15134705 ^BTK close, 01/08...... 505.24 ^BTK close, today...... 647.85 quote.yahoo.com^BTK&d=5d The old refrain, related to me by a true guru..... Investing is like waiting at a bus stop. If you miss one bus, another will be along soon. As long as we have "Cramers" in this world -- spreading the gospel of biotech valuation -- there will be wild, screaming bargains.

To: tom pope who wrote (2676)	1/25/2001 11:26:46 PM
From: Biomaven	Respond to of 52153

<Cramer on BTX> Actually I thought this was a pretty interesting article. It's sort of how I started in biotech investing - trying to judge the merits of biotech companies while knowing very little about the fundamentals of what they are doing. In fact at some level it's still what I do to an extent. Let's take the P38 kinase inhibitors that were discussed on this thread as an example. I certainly don't know enough to be able to distinguish whether the VRTX program has better fundamentals than the SCIO program. In fact it's doubtful that anyone but an insider or collaborator really has a good handle on which one has more promise. If I'm lucky one of the biotech scientist types may have an informed (or at least semi-informed) opinion to share, but often they don't. So what to do? You do kind of what Kramer does, but with the benefit of more insight into the field. You look at their partners, you read the tea leaves of the press releases and if you are lucky you find a decent article that discusses things. If you are thorough, you look at the scientists working on the project and see what else they have published. (I can't say I typically do this, but Rick for one certainly does). You then end up with at most an informed guess as to the chance of success and the relative merits of the projects. You are still not done of course - you then still get to compare your view of the merits with the street's view as best you can figure it. Nobody says it's easy, but you only have to be right a little over half the time to do fine in the long run. By the way, BTX is a long-time short favorite, starting with our old friend Asensio. He probably still has some stuff on his web site (if it still exists) slamming the product and the company. He viewed it as glorified saline, and I suspect that view contains some truth - not sure just how much though. I personally almost always stay away (whether on the long side or the short) from crowded shorts, so I've never really looked at the merits of the product. Peter