Trending Assets
Top investors this month
Trending Assets
Top investors this month
@robtsai
Rob T
$21.8M follower assets
158 following446 followers
CRSP technical setup by Trade Brigade
I've been trying to absorb some technical trading knowledge by watching other traders talk setups, and here is a good video from Trade Brigade on CRSP.


The whole Crispr tech complex has been decimated lately, as they all tend to trade in tandem sharing similar gene editing technology, and Trade Brigade talks through a strategy for Monday morning. I'm not going to trade it - but I'm curious to learn from it.

We've seen several news items crush tech/biotech in general:

  • Interest rates spiking upward, crushing growth stocks where earnings are expected far in the future

  • Some recent trials like the one by Editas showing less than stellar results

  • A Merck pill that is supposed to fix Covid by reducing hospitalizations by 50% - crushing a lot of the Covid testing complex (like recent IPO Cue Health), as well as players like Abcellera generating antibody treatments

  • A Scorpion short seller report accusing Gingko Bioworks as a massive fraud

On the daily side, CRSP was range bound between 115 and 130, but broke to the downside all the way down to 96.

If the trading range was 15 points (130 minus 115), then a 100% downside break would put you at 100, so 96 was even below that floor, so he is looking for a deadcat bounce to retrace some of that downside on Monday.

Plotting the resistance line downtrend, he sees the upside resistance at about 106.

I currently own BEAM, EDIT, VERV, NTLA, CRBU who all have similar charts, so I don't need to add more exposure to benefit from a deadcat bounce here. The bigger question is what do you think of these technologies in general, and I am still bullish long term on their future.

For anyone who has no exposure to this space, this is a great entry point. By way of comparison, I have 14% of my portfolio in those 5 companies listed above.

You can watch his video for his read on the 30 minute charts on how he thinks it's likely to play out.
post media
YouTube
CRSP (Crispr Therapeutics) Stock Technical Analysis | 10/9/2021
Check out the main channel: https://youtube.com/tradebrigade► TECHNICAL ANALYSIS COURSE: https://tradebrigade.co/learn/► 1-on-1 GUIDANCE CALLS: https://trade...

September not a month to remember
Well, my portfolio was crushed in September, declining in tandem with many of fellow members' portfolios who are levered to high growth names, as interest rate fears emerged in the month and other fears arose from China's Evergrande collapse, debt ceilings, government shutdowns.

Portfolio was down 8% (stocks) and 5.5% (including the cash component which cushioned the fall).

What really hurt above and beyond were a multitude of factors:
  1. Lightspeed crushed on short seller report
  2. Editas reported trial results - where safety was fine, but the results of improved vision only accrued at mid level dosing and not that apparent at lower doses. Stock sold off from a healthy gain on my cost basis to a small loss.
  3. Merck's recent announcement that its oral drug can reduce COVID hospitalizations by 50% crushed some of my other health stocks. Cue Health which makes Covid tests (and is in some ways the realization of what Theranos could have and should have become except that it was a complete fraud) - is now a busted IPO on this news. Abcellera whose research platforms made antibodies for COVID also crushed on this news.

I actually think Cue Health and Abcellera are good buys at this level.

Taking my licks - and figuring out how to play the next month.
post media

Really appreciate posts like this talking about the events that didn't end up going your way. It's never fun to be down but I respect the reflection. My portfolio was down too in September.
Add a comment…
Merck's oral pill for COVID crushes all other COVID stocks
$ABCL is down big on the news that Merck's new drug reduces hospitalization by 50%

Same with the recent ipo $HLTH which produces the home testing assay and reader/mobile app that came out at $16 rocketed to $21, and now way below the IPO price.

I would expect the market to sell off these other stocks on this news, but feels way overdone to me.

Abcellera has other programs besides COVID, and same with $HLTH testing platform.

Getting some right and wrong - had Zoom prior to earnings, so taking a hit on the low guidance moving forward, with the minus 15% early morning hit.

Seems the market is liking Riskified and it is ramping up, and Affirm is continuing its run (loved the +45% yesterday on AMZN news).

Trying to figure out how to minimize the mistakes and maximize the wins.

TRANSPARENCY AS A VIRTUE - PUBLISH OR PERISH APPLIES TO STOCK VALUATION AND NOT JUST TENURE FOR PROFESSORS
I've been looking back at trades trying to figure out what to learn from winners and losers, and it's pretty clear that with science applications, you need access to the data - and this means publishing in journals with peer review.

I follow Cathie Wood's ARKK funds for ideas, and two stocks ARKK and ARKG have owned (and I think still own) are Intellia and Quantum-Si.

Currently NTLA is the 12th largest holding of ARKK and QSI is the 39th largest holding of ARKG.

Here's a fun question for those who track and follow ARKK and ARKG.
What ARKK/ARKG stocks have been your biggest winner and loser?

Why do you think, and is there anything to learn in hindsight?

For me, my biggest winner so far is Intellia with an average cost of $74, up 117% from my entry.

My biggest loser (sold out) is QSI - bought in around 12 and sold at around 8, so a 33% loss (I need to set a tighter stop for sure):

If I had to take anything away from it all - I think with NTLA, the positive scientific results shared in a prominent journal like New England Journal of Medicine kicked it all off - though I had no prescient knowledge that the results would be that good or so widely lauded.


Compare that to QSI - I read the Q2 earnings transcript, and I found this interchange quite telling with CEO John Stark - which went something like - "Hey why don't you have any papers published on your system" and the response being - "yeah good idea, we should do that." I sold and took the loss. Now maybe they have something in the works with NEJM just like Intellia did and can't speak about it, but I'm willing to sit it out for now.


Kyle Mikson
Great. Okay. That was great. And you kind of alluded to some of the PTM analysis stuff there too, but I think you talked about in the prepared remarks, something about generating data, maybe publications with some of these early users. Do you kind of obviously you have been an outstanding IP portfolio, tons of issued patents and pending [indiscernible]? Could there be maybe next year or two some papers submitted for publication or even like white papers for some just tangible kind of data. I'm just wondering because it would – it would maybe help kind of accelerate kind of the types of applications as well as just the awareness?

John Stark
Absolutely, that's the goal. And again, when we partner with early access groups, we always talk about study designs and potential applications, resource them accordingly. Again early access reason why we're now at five halfway through the year, and we'll be accelerating into the back end of the year with a minimum of 10 placements, as we feel very confident with the instrument is that, we – we're now focused on providing product; we're focused on scaling the commercial organization, but you really hit it on the head that's one of the key areas of focus, which is finalize the optimization of the system, but also show real meaningful published data that represents application, and we'll continue down that path here for the foreseeable future.
post mediapost media
Seeking Alpha
Quantum-Si incorporated's (QSI) CEO John Stark on Q2 2021 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Quantum-Si incorporated (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:QSI) Q2 2021 Earnings Conference Call August 16, 2021 4:30 PM ETCompany ParticipantsMike Cavanaugh – Investor...

Nice reading between the lines- John Stark's initial answer of "Absolutely, that's the goal" for submitting papers for publication makes it sound like it could happen. But the rest of the answer suggests a lack of focus.
Add a comment…
The pain trade for institutions is if the market keeps melting up
It's very interesting - Goldman has a piece out today that the trade that will hurt institutions the most is if the market keeps melting up!!!

If the institutions have already reduced exposure and leverage and also have bought downside protection, then it's quite possible the trend moving up will continue - as when did you ever remember a crash occuring when all the insitutions were ready and prepared. Most crashes occur after euphoria and panic buying - and based on this piece - we haven't seen that blow off top yet.


Via Zerohedge:

This is consistent with the reading from GS Prime Brokerage:
  • a) Last week, the GS Prime book saw the largest $ net selling in four months (-1.9SDs), driven by short sales outpacing long buys 10 to 1. Both Single Names and Macro Products (Index and ETF combined) were net sold and made up ~70%/30% of the $ net selling.
  • b) Overall book Gross leverage fell -1.5 pts to 238.4% (52nd percentile one-year), while Net leverage fell -1.7 pts to 84.5% (32nd percentile one-year).
  • c) Fundamental L/S Gross leverage fell -1.1 pts to 172.9% (18th percentile one-year), while Fundamental L/S Net leverage fell -2.2 pts - the largest decrease in more than three months - to 63.3% (36th percentile one-year).

This is also consistent with AAII survey which showed more bears than bulls for the first time this year or CNN Fear and Greed Index = 22 reading "extreme fear". Also institutional global wall street "inboxes" were hit with "EXTREME NEGATIVE GAMMA FLIP" emails last week which added to the negative sentiment/quick macro shorting of IWM/EEM, etc.

My plan is to continue holding these stocks (this portfolio is close to the Commonstock one I have but it also includes my IRA assets), and I like being able to categorize the holdings:
post media
www.zerohedge.com
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

I've been gradually raising cash - converting my 401k SPY and Target Funds to be able to pick up the dip that I think is coming, and yet the market keeps chugging along.

I've been tinkering around the edges of the portfolio - selling out of $CRSP, because all my other Crispr stocks have performed and the largest market cap one seems mired in quicksand.

Added small stakes in $AMD and $NVDA and $ESTC in the last month.

Biotechs as always look exciting and dangerous. Check out $SAVA today ouch!

@robtsai08/27/2021
Goes to show you don't know which days to sit out of the market. Wow - big green day for sure (except for $AFRM) . Will be interesting to see if there's a follow through next week.
+ 1 comment
Combining Keytruda with ex-vivo TIL can cause lung cancer remission?
This article from Stat+ highlights a promising development:

Drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed treatment of many types of tumors, but metastatic lung cancer has proven more challenging: While these medications have significantly extended survival for some patients, most still do not respond or develop resistance quickly. Now a small proof-of-concept study published in Nature Medicine shows that a new form of immunotherapy using a patient’s own immune cells may bring about durable responses for some people with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Patients in the small Phase 1 pilot trial were treated with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), which have previously brought about durable remissions in studies of patients with some other cancers but had not previously been tested in metastatic lung cancer. TILs are naturally found in solid tumors and have the ability to kill cancer cells, but the body doesn’t produce enough of them. So the researchers extracted the cells from tumors and grew billions of copies in lab dishes before transferring them back into the patients.

When combined with chemotherapy and a monoclonal antibody drug, the therapy led to complete remission in two patients with stage 4 lung cancer that were ongoing after 1.5 years. The authors also reported a reduction of tumor burden in 11 out of the 16 patients, with an overall reduction in size of 35%.
“Many patients with this cancer count their lives in weeks to months,” said Roberto Ruiz-Cordero, a pathologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved with the study. “So the fact that at least two patients achieved complete responses and were alive one and a half years later is outstanding.”
I opened a 1% position in $IOVA, which focuses on TIL therapies. Here's their pipeline:
post media
Nature
Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte treatment for anti-PD-1-resistant metastatic lung cancer: a phase 1 trial - Nature Medicine
Adoptive cell therapy with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in metastatic lung cancer patients is safe and elicits antitumor activity, including ongoing complete responses, in association with polyclonal T cell responses against tumor antigens.

AbCellera bounces off of $15 base, up 18% after 2q earnings call
Watching $ABCL bleed out from $60 to $15 was painful, and I picked up a small tranche of shares at $15.47 11 days ago thinking a bottom may have been in place.

ABCL provides research services on their drug discovery platform for antibody treatment protocols - and their primary partnership with Eli Lilly's antibody treatment for COVID was suspended because the Delta variant proved resistant. It may have caused investors to believe that antibody treatments are useless against the ever changing virus - but perhaps it is wrong to extrapolate from a small sample size of 1.

ABCL notes they have 138 programs underway.

Will look to see how the stock trades on Monday - and may layer on another tranche.

Here's their PDF link:

@robtsai08/13/2021
On the earnings call - they noted an acquisition of a mouse platform called Trianni:

In our Trianni platform, an acquisition which we completed in 2020, it continued to contribute directly to our top line, generating milestone payments of $1 million and licensing fees of approximately $300,000 in the quarter. That brings the total revenue from the Trianni platform in the first half of the year to over $20 million. The primary benefit of the Trianni platform of course lies in enhancing the technology stack of our discovery programs. And we continue to invest and develop the next generation of animals internally to expand those capabilities. And we're pleased to see the licensees succeed with the Trianni flagship mouse in their own programs.

Sounds like they got a good deal!
Add a comment…
Watchlist
Something went wrong while loading your statistics.
Please try again later.
Already have an account?