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

To: Robohogs who wrote (31982)	8/7/2009 12:34:34 AM
From: John Metcalf	2 Recommendations Respond to of 52153

"Can anyone help get me more positive? I hate being this bearish." Not me. I'm focused on maintaining the purchasing power I have now by holding gold, silver, and commodities. If anything, I'm using the biotech rally to raise even more cash, and I already have a lot.

To: Robohogs who wrote (31982)	8/7/2009 7:43:02 AM
From: IRWIN JAMES FRANKEL	1 Recommendation Respond to of 52153

>> I believe we will get 1-2 quarters of positive growth before double dipping. Certainly plausible. Something of a dead cat bounce before resuming the decline is reasonable. Or GDP may drop slowly in 3Q and turn down harder after that as governments cut employment and the service sector fades. >>I do not see how profit margins sustain recent increases and as a result think as margins normalize lower than recent peaks, EPS growth will be challenging. I agree with that in the aggregate. But I would not underestimate the ability of businesses to pass the pressure off to employees by layoffs, pay cuts and productivity. The biography of Andrew Carnegie makes an interesting read for how he handled recessions in favor of the corporation. Some firms will try his playbook. In July my firm, which is counter cyclical, set all time volume records by about 11% over the prior month peak. That beats the normal March tax refund peak of last March. My read is that debtors are in debt liquidation mode unlike anything I have ever seen. On the placement side we have seen a lull in new business from creditors. That is quite odd. All the charge-off and delinquency stats suggest a huge backlog is building at the creditor collection centers. At some point the dam will break - probably this fall. ij

To: Robohogs who wrote (31982)	8/7/2009 9:39:38 AM
From: Biomaven	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

>>Can anyone help get me more positive? Well in the short/intermediate term we have the offsetting effect that short-term interest rates are going to stay near-zero. There's that old saying in the market "Don't fight the Fed" that has a lot of validity. Longer-term I'm much more gloomy. The structural deficit looks daunting, and the demographics will make things worse. Still think that long long-dated TIPS, short long-term Treasuries might be the correct long-term play. (You might get temporarily hurt in a panic with a rush to liquidity, so can't go hog-wild leveraging this though). I've maintained my long biotechs, long preferreds and muni bonds and short the entire market position. I've obviously been hurt by my shorts, but I've still more than made up my losses from last year so I'm generally a happy camper. Peter