Talking Stocks 2.0

[7sins]

Originally Posted by Romeojk

Anyone else still in AUPH with me? Up one day and down the next. I wonder if people will keep selling whenever there is movement up.

Almost looks like Snoopy.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Still two feet in, dollar cost averaging all the way down to lower my cost basis, own now 100k+ shares and various options so it is a meaningful position for me. Patent issues should be settled soon and I think the resignation of these two execs are a good sign. Next ER is soon and will factor in their $30M EU approval payment from Otsuka. Been a wild ride, the joys of biotech investing.

[logo]

Not invested, haven’t looked into this stock in a while so some of this might be incorrect, but I have major questions regarding the cost of voclosporin. I believe it’s somewhere around 75k-90k/year, vs benlysta at ~45k/year (someone correct me if I’m wrong). I also recall the CEO had said they have margins of 97% or something crazy. Epidemiology suggests that patients with LN tend to be in a lower socioeconomic bracket (insurance questions). Outside of the US under funded healthcare models, there are also usually several hoops to jump through before getting access to novel agents at that price. Apart from this, while belimumab may not be quite as efficacious for rapid effects compared to voclosporin (though, there are no head to head trials to say one way or the other), belimumab is a good medicine for LN while also having significant benefits for organ systems outside of the kidney that are affected by lupus. When we are talking drugs that are this expensive, that is a major consideration and I wonder how much of the forward projections are based on an annual price that’s just not realistic to support the scale of adoption they need.

Here’s a link to a cost-benefit analysis for lupus nephritis only (full systemic lupus manifestations not considered). Voclosporin did not meet thresholds for willingness to pay in this study, but benlysta did: https://cjasn.asnjournals.org/content/17/3/385

[7sins]

Originally Posted by logo

Not invested, haven’t looked into this stock in a while so some of this might be incorrect, but I have major questions regarding the cost of voclosporin. I believe it’s somewhere around 75k-90k/year, vs benlysta at ~45k/year (someone correct me if I’m wrong). I also recall the CEO had said they have margins of 97% or something crazy. Epidemiology suggests that patients with LN tend to be in a lower socioeconomic bracket (insurance questions). Outside of the US under funded healthcare models, there are also usually several hoops to jump through before getting access to novel agents at that price. Apart from this, while belimumab may not be quite as efficacious for rapid effects compared to voclosporin (though, there are no head to head trials to say one way or the other), belimumab is a good medicine for LN while also having significant benefits for organ systems outside of the kidney that are affected by lupus. When we are talking drugs that are this expensive, that is a major consideration and I wonder how much of the forward projections are based on an annual price that’s just not realistic to support the scale of adoption they need.

Here’s a link to a cost-benefit analysis for lupus nephritis only (full systemic lupus manifestations not considered). Voclosporin did not meet thresholds for willingness to pay in this study, but benlysta did: https://cjasn.asnjournals.org/content/17/3/385

You can't have a cost analysis without denoting efficacy. While belimumab is somewhat effective in those with SLE, that is not the case with LN. Voclosporin is a SUPERIOR drug in every single metric, especially for those with LN. Additionally more and more insurance companies are covering Voclosporin as the efficacy is so superior it ends of being more cost effective in the long run despite the initial higher cost. As I have said here many times, you BUY THE DRUG/SCIENCE not the company and AUPH without question has the leading solution for Lupus with no competitor even close - despite possibly the worst management and BOD known to existence. The duality here being GWK actually has a marketing team accompanied with a big pharma budget that continues to successfully push Benlysta. Voc in the right hands of a BP will, without question, be a blockbuster drug.

[logo]

Originally Posted by 7sins

You can't have a cost analysis without denoting efficacy. While belimumab is somewhat effective in those with SLE, that is not the case with LN. Voclosporin is a SUPERIOR drug in every single metric, especially for those with LN. Additionally more and more insurance companies are covering Voclosporin as the efficacy is so superior it ends of being more cost effective in the long run despite the initial higher cost. As I have said here many times, you BUY THE DRUG/SCIENCE not the company and AUPH without question has the leading solution for Lupus with no competitor even close - despite possibly the worst management and BOD known to existence. The duality here being GWK actually has a marketing team accompanied with a big pharma budget that continues to successfully push Benlysta. Voc in the right hands of a BP will, without question, be a blockbuster drug.

Data thus far suggests voclosporin is likely faster and better for lupus nephritis than belimumab, but we can’t overlay results from two separate studies to conclude the exact efficacy ratio and confirm superiority - need head to head trials. But even so, I agree the data so far suggests voclosporin should likely be superior for lupus nephritis. The problem is, lupus nephritis is just one component of systemic lupus erythematosus. These SLE patients get terrible skin disease, inflammatory arthritis, cardiac and lung issues, strokes etc. in addition to kidney involvement and for these other systemic manifestations belimumab seems like it will be superior to voclosporin. So unless a physician has a reason to prioritize the kidney over everything else (eg advanced LN where other organ systems have non-critical involvement) belimumab makes more sense to broadly improve many aspects of SLE. There is also the recently FDA-approved anti-interferon drug anifrolumab that is approved for SLE and also works well for many organ systems. So yes if LN is the priority/in isolation, voclosporin might end up being the gold standard. But for patients with SLE with LN, the answer is less clear - really depends on many factors. In an ideal world you’d use belimumab or anifrolumab as background immunotherapy and add voclosporin on top.

[superdog]

I realize we can find articles to justify whatever we might be thinking. Articles on all things these days.

But this seems appropriate to me, based on my own thinking. Just because we used to do it a certain way, doesn’t mean that’s the way to do it now.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/i...100042271.html

[RidingDonkeys]

Originally Posted by Romeojk

Anyone else still in AUPH with me? Up one day and down the next. I wonder if people will keep selling whenever there is movement up.

Almost looks like Snoopy.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm still on this ride too. Not nearly as much as some, but enough of a position to feel all the bumps.

Sent from the voices in my head and transcribed by their drinking buddy.

[904VT]

I’m going to be that guy…did this thread die as soon as the market got difficult?

I think most would benefit from a high quality active fund manager. The expense focus has devalued, but more important than ever to have someone that can dedicate their time fully.

[huncho]

on todays episode of things you'd never think would be real -

$1.2T company loses 20% of its market cap in less than 1 min

[904VT]

Originally Posted by huncho

on todays episode of things you'd never think would be real -

$1.2T company loses 20% of its market cap in less than 1 min

Have to love when valuations are driven by emotions and inaccurate forecasts. Baked in revenue projections and earnings projections being focused on such a short-term period such as quarter over quarter, combined with beta in the hands of everyone in ETFs, does not do well for making efficient markets. Nowadays it's almost like even if you identify misevaluations, you have to fight the supply demand behavioral dynamic driven by mass beta in the hands of retail investors. Too much passive that just has to buy because of market cap and sell at the worst time to rebalance indices.

[huncho]

Originally Posted by 904VT

Have to love when valuations are driven by emotions and inaccurate forecasts. Baked in revenue projections and earnings projections being focused on such a short-term period such as quarter over quarter, combined with beta in the hands of everyone in ETFs, does not do well for making efficient markets. Nowadays it's almost like even if you identify misevaluations, you have to fight the supply demand behavioral dynamic driven by mass beta in the hands of retail investors. Too much passive that just has to buy because of market cap and sell at the worst time to rebalance indices.

i think investing has just gone too mainstream with apps like robinhood making it so easy to get into and all the traction and news the stock market got during the pandemic. it feels like valuations and ratios got severely skewed with the inflow of so much new money so how do you even gauge what's undervalued or overvalued anymore? looking back at the valuations last year now is pretty funny and the best part is they'll be even crazier next cycle because of the nature of cycles. those passive investments also just constantly provide a floor and allow indexes to go up forever. i think what the stock market initially intended to be has gone out the window and now it's more of a casino

[macrowatch]

Originally Posted by 904VT

I’m going to be that guy…did this thread die as soon as the market got difficult?

I think most would benefit from a high quality active fund manager. The expense focus has devalued, but more important than ever to have someone that can dedicate their time fully.

Maybe all the money went to fixed income and decided to sit in 3 and 6 month treasuries. So...much to do about nothing other than look at what watches to add to collection!

[RidingDonkeys]

Originally Posted by macrowatch

Maybe all the money went to fixed income and decided to sit in 3 and 6 month treasuries. So...much to do about nothing other than look at what watches to add to collection!

Pretty much. Not much to do but sit and watch in this market.

Sent from the voices in my head and transcribed by their drinking buddy.

[superdog]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/l...191000969.html

https://news.yahoo.com/legendary-inv...123514315.html


amazing. two experts in the field. two opposite viewpoints.

granted Siegel, is clearly talking to long term investors. But wether long or short term, no one wants to buy high, when the prices could very well be dramatically lower in the very near future.

time will tell.

[SMD]

Originally Posted by superdog

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/l...191000969.html

https://news.yahoo.com/legendary-inv...123514315.html


amazing. two experts in the field. two opposite viewpoints.

granted Siegel, is clearly talking to long term investors. But wether long or short term, no one wants to buy high, when the prices could very well be dramatically lower in the very near future.

time will tell.

Kind of the the textbook definition of a market -- doesn't really work if you don't have people on opposite sides of the trade.

[superdog]

Originally Posted by SMD

Kind of the the textbook definition of a market -- doesn't really work if you don't have people on opposite sides of the trade.

makes sense.

[SMD]

Originally Posted by superdog

makes sense.

Hopefully that didn’t come across Dickish - it wasn’t meant to be. I have often thought the same thing, but even on the worst down days there is always someone on the other side of the trade.

[superdog]

Originally Posted by SMD

Hopefully that didn’t come across Dickish - it wasn’t meant to be. I have often thought the same thing, but even on the worst down days there is always someone on the other side of the trade.

Appreciate you saying. But no sweat. Didn’t take it that way. In fact, as simple as it was, and as much as I was aware of that fact, it was pretty profound.

Truly…it makes sense.

[904VT]

Originally Posted by macrowatch

Maybe all the money went to fixed income and decided to sit in 3 and 6 month treasuries. So...much to do about nothing other than look at what watches to add to collection!

Plenty of money to be made right now imo. Though watches does seem more fun

[904VT]

Originally Posted by huncho

i think investing has just gone too mainstream with apps like robinhood making it so easy to get into and all the traction and news the stock market got during the pandemic. it feels like valuations and ratios got severely skewed with the inflow of so much new money so how do you even gauge what's undervalued or overvalued anymore? looking back at the valuations last year now is pretty funny and the best part is they'll be even crazier next cycle because of the nature of cycles. those passive investments also just constantly provide a floor and allow indexes to go up forever. i think what the stock market initially intended to be has gone out the window and now it's more of a casino

RDNA 3 is way behind the NVIDIA 40 series. 90-95% rasterization with 60% Ray tracing performance. Looks like NVIDIA was ahead of the curve and already cut 4090 production and shifted towards high margin Hopper. Those sell about $40k and use same TSMC 4n. 4090s will be a hot commodity for NVIDIA for years now. They have no reason to fear AMD now. May be too late to buy the dip.

[macrowatch]

Originally Posted by 904VT

Plenty of money to be made right now imo. Though watches does seem more fun

I know, with 11x the interest being earned compared to at the beginning of the year, it adds up quickly!

[superdog]

I am actually grateful that the fed did not pivot.

All that talk about starting to slow down hikes was making me nervous.

We need to be feeling the pain. Things need to change. If the markets go running again and everyone feels flush, folks are buying more and more with less and less supply. inflation will get worse.

layoffs are coming. unemployment will rise. growth will stop. commercial industrial real estate bubble will pop. consumer debt is record high. savings is at record lows. folks are way underwater on many of the "things" they bought.

things have to get worse before they get better.

[m j b]

Tuesday I found an email in one of my folders from December. It was a promo piece from The Motley Fool, the investment guys, with their top 5 recommendations.

For grins, I looked up the stock price for each in December and compared them to the current price. I am unaware of any splits.

One went from 41 to 4.
Another is unchanged.
One went from 37 to 24.
Another went from 49 to 17.
And the last went private, I have no idea at what price.

So there's that.

I am waiting for the "buy" signal that we have reached bottom. Unfortunately, my ability to recognize the signal is impaired, or if you prefer, non-existent, so I guess I need to start buying now, and DCA.

I'm not sure that I'm quite as negative as Seth is, in the post above, but the more I read it (I've reread it three times now) I'm starting to think that he has some good points. And some of the recent earnings announcements have included low forecasts.

So maybe I won't start buying yet.

[SDGT3]

I don't think we're going back to a low interest rate environment as we've experienced in the past 15 years. As a result, I tend to watch closely at what the Fed does and says to give some forward guidance.

Listening to Powell's post rate increase speech and subsequent Q&A session yesterday, here is what I took away from him:

- housing has been affected by rate hikes, but little else.

- It's way too early to talk about a pause let alone a pivot, but we will talk about a slowing of rate increases in Dec. and then in Feb. but there is no stop to raising rates in the foreseeable future.

- The tight labor market continues to be a problem for inflationary pressures and we don't know how that will change as the participation rate is low and the increase in supply of labor the analysts expected never materialized.

- Fed funds rates may go into restrictive territory and if so, we don't know how long they will have to remain there to get inflation back down to 2%

- It's going to take a while to get back down to 2% inflation rate.

- If we over tighten and go into recession, we can always quickly lower rates as a measure to combat this

Reading between the lines, there will be 2 more prints on inflation before their Dec. meeting and it sounds like the increase can be anywhere from .5 to 1%.

[scarlet knight]

Municipal bonds are viable now. Probably rates continue to go up for a bit. Not sexy.

[dmash]

Originally Posted by superdog

layoffs are coming. unemployment will rise. growth will stop. commercial industrial real estate bubble will pop. consumer debt is record high. savings is at record lows. folks are way underwater on many of the "things" they bought.

which makes me question how near anybody can confidently make comments on TRF, IG, etc that the watch/luxury good market won't continue to go trend downwards.

people do realize that a large buying population of luxury goods are middle class people who want to exude what they believe to be a luxury lifestyle, right? some guys are constantly chirping that luxury goods markets will be unaffected in a recession, due to them being flush with cash anyhow, but it's quite opposite the truth.



also re: some other posters, I'm essentially completely cash at this point still waiting on my tiered entry points. I think a couple more weeks will give a better outlook. I'm still of the theory there's some propping up continuing to happen until post Nov 8

[superdog]

Originally Posted by dmash

which makes me question how near anybody can confidently make comments on TRF, IG, etc that the watch/luxury good market won't continue to go trend downwards.

people do realize that a large buying population of luxury goods are middle class people who want to exude what they believe to be a luxury lifestyle, right? some guys are constantly chirping that luxury goods markets will be unaffected in a recession, due to them being flush with cash anyhow, but it's quite opposite the truth.



also re: some other posters, I'm essentially completely cash at this point still waiting on my tiered entry points. I think a couple more weeks will give a better outlook. I'm still of the theory there's some propping up continuing to happen until post Nov 8

I am with you on this. And I realize that I too am speculating. But I cannot imagine how this goes in any other way. I do think that watches will continue sliding along with literally everything else.

I too am most cash. I am still invested, but minimally, and only top tier blue chip stocks. Some short term bonds, some gold.

But I also sold a high ticket car, and I have my beach house and one of my rentals both in the process of being sold. I am raising as much cash as possible to put into the markets. slowly, over time. But I do not think we are there yet.

[enjoythemusic]

Speaking of liquidation, with the Japan Yen hitting lows, go long?

[macrowatch]

Originally Posted by enjoythemusic

Speaking of liquidation, with the Japan Yen hitting lows, go long?

Yes. And convert into ramen.

[7sins]

Originally Posted by macrowatch

Yes. And convert into ramen.

More like cup noodles

[denmanproject]

AUPH today... wow!

I was looking at starting a position this week around $8 glad I held off