Teeka Tiwari teasers wash up on the shores of Gumshoe island every few months, though we don’t cover them all that often because he hasn’t done a lot of teasing of individual stock ideas (he has more frequently, if memory serves, pitched his trading “systems”). It looks like Tiwari’s Mega Trends is now being published by Common Sense Publishing, one of the newer arms of the Agora octopus, so perhaps we’ll see more of his teases in the months to come.
This one caught the eye as one of several active promotion campaigns about Ebola-related stocks. No one is surprised that any stock with any kind of hint of a connection to curing or treating the dreaded Ebola virus is being chatted up by investors these days, that happens every time a deadly outbreak or, worse, a real pandemic, hits the public health radar (and the front page of the newspaper).
As Tiwari’s ad indicates, these perennial seasons of panic put wings — often very temporarily — under the share price of well-marketed biotech stocks with a connection to the panic, whether it’s Avian Flu or Swine Flu or SARS or the anthrax bioterror attacks. And yes, if you time these well and get lucky and the headlines continue to drive investors in your stock’s direction, you can certainly see a quick profit… though on the flip side, as you can probably imagine, you can also see the panic subside quickly and the associated stocks drop like a stone.
Tiwari implies that his study of those several past panics gives some predictive power to what will happen to the Ebola stocks (all of which have already risen and fallen sharply several times during this latest outbreak), but that strikes me as a dangerous assumption — a dozen stocks across three or four different outbreak-type events in the past 10 years provides just one tiny little sliver of data even if the fact that you see the charts spiking up repeatedly in the presentation to give you great confidence. Assigning any real predictive power to those past charts seems a bit foolhardy to me — this is not technical analysis, which does work on some level to put the odds slightly in your favor, technical analysis depends on well-studied long-term patterns. This is event-driven investing that a copywriter can imply is predictable through the use of visually compelling charts, but we all know — or should — that every event can easily be different than the last.
Which doesn’t mean that the Ebola stocks mightn’t go on another run, or double or quadruple from here. I have no idea. I can just issue that small note of caution, and go on to check out the clues and let you know which ones Tiwari is pitching. So let’s get to it.
Here’s a bit from the ad:
“If just one infected individual gets on a plane, we’re looking at an epidemic that could spread like wildfire through the communities of suburban America.
“The U.S. and Canadian governments have already funnelled more than $5.5 billion into treating and containing this killer.
“That’s not a ton of money to a big pharma giant like Pfizer. But it’s a fortune to the tiny companies actively racing to deliver a treatment to the hands of the government.
“But the fact is, the stocks we’ve found won’t rise or fall based on dollars changing hands…
“There’s a much more powerful catalyst that should drive these stocks to new levels…
“It’s a simple ‘trigger’… And once you know how to recognize it, proactive investors can make a small fortune.”
You can review his whole ad here if you want the details, and his assessments of those past “waves” of outbreak stocks. But That “trigger” seems to be, broadly, the wave of news-driven panic about outbreaks — and it’s getting triggered pretty frequently from what I can tell… including the further spread of the outbreak in West Africa reported just today. I’d argue that it’s pretty irresponsible to say that an epidemic would spread like wildfire through suburban America if one Ebola sufferer got on a plane, since the virus is not airborne and seems to be well contained in places that have good and consistent containment protocols… but it’s also a much scarier and more exotic disease than familiar (and sometimes deadly) ailments like influenza, so it is true that if a surprise Ebola victim shows up in a random American hospital or airport there will undoubtedly be panic, whether really justified or not.
So what are the stocks that Tiwari thinks can follow in the past “winners” footsteps of BioCryst, Novovax, Sarepta, Hemispherx, Sinovac and others that benefitted from big spikes from SARS or the various avian and swine flu epidemics?
Here are our clues:
“OPPORTUNITY #1: This Tiny Canadian Company Has Partnered with The Pentagon To “Cure the Incurable”…
“This tiny Canadian company has been researching and developing a cure for the Ebola virus for more than 5 years…
“It posted results of its pre-clinical trials on monkeys in scientific journal, The Lancet, in May 2010…”
We’ll stop it right there, they give another dozen or so clues and more jibber jabber about them, but this is quite clearly Tekmira Pharmaceuticals (TMKR in NY, TKM in Toronto), an RNAi “platform” company which has a cancer drug and a Hepatitis B drug in the pipeline but which is getting interest these days mostly because of its pre-clinical Ebola vaccine.
I won’t pretend to know what’s going to happen with Tekmira, or with their experimental vaccine — I hope it works, my quick read is that so far it has seemed encouraging on efficacy but discouraging on safety. Dr. KSS, who leads a series of biotech discussions for the Irregulars, has talked some about Tekmira and RNAi in past articles and mentioned it (not positively) in follow up comments like this one. Others will certainly issue cautious statements about wading into Ebola stock speculation, too, including Nigam Arora here.
There’s a more positive spin on the Ebola “opportunity” for Tekmira and others in this SeekingAlpha rundown, and Tekmira hit the NY Times and Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago, which probably helped to keep the shares up in the $20ish neighborhood. And yes, any company with any potential for using one of their compounds for Ebola has ramped up the push to do testing or get emergency approval or whatever else to get more attention of late, though Tekmira has indeed been working on this Ebola vaccine for many years, largely with government funding.
TKMR is a decent-sized biotech, market cap around $450 million, and they do have $100 million in cash so they’re not going to be strapped in the next few months (that would be enough for a few years of operations at their recent “burn rate,” though presumably their currently early-stage clinical trials, if they advance, will become more expensive as they move on to the next level).
So you can work out your bet on that one one way or the other — I mostly try to avoid highly volatile stocks whose markets I don’t understand, particularly when they don’t have anything to keep them grounded (like revenues, or earnings), but that doesn’t mean they won’t create compelling trading opportunities for folks who are more nimble than I.
How about Tiwari’s other stocks?
“OPPORTUNITY #2:
“Developed in Canada… Made in Germany… Sold in Iowa… And proven 100% effective in preventing Ebola infection…
“On August 5, 2014, in what might seem like a surprising move, this tiny cancer laboratory in Iowa entered into a contract with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
“The point?
“To rush an Ebola vaccine it’s been working on ‘on the side’ to clinical trials.
“As the company CEO said:
“This [developing an Ebola vaccination] is not our primary business, but we have a vaccine that’s further along than almost all of the others, and it’s such a high-profile area that the government basically came to us and said, ‘We want to accelerate your vaccine.'”
“That contract gives the lab $1 million up front.”
This one, sez the Mighty, Mighty Thinkolator, is NewLink Genetics (NLNK). They are working on an experimental vaccine that has worked in primates, and they and their partners have donated thousands of doses to the Ebola fight, but it’s unclear whether anyone’s really excited to take them as testing continues — it’s one thing to treat a patient who has Ebola and has a huge need for any possible cure, it’s another thing entirely to vaccinate healthy medical workers or volunteers for the first time. There’s an interesting article on it from Bloomberg here from mid-August.
Ebola is not their focus at all, or at least it wasn’t a month ago — it’s not on their development pipeline, this is a company mostly developing cancer immunotherapies that they call “HyperAcute Immunotherapy”, including some that are in advanced clinical trials. A look at the chart says that something big happened for NLNK back in February and March — that was the release of preliminary data on their lead pancreatic cancer immunotherapy Phase III trial, a data release that was hotly anticipated and which took the stock on a wild ride (the stock more than doubled in anticipation of the preliminary data, then collapsed when the data was not as sexy and exciting as hoped, though it wasn’t necessarily negative). I don’t know anything else about the company, I’m afraid, so I’ll leave you to research it and find your own opinion — I don’t think they’ve ever come up on the site before.
And one more?
“While most companies have focused on Ebola, this company has been working on a treatment for Ebola’s “little cousin”—the Marburg virus…
“The science and medicine journal, Nature, reports monkeys injected with Marburg virus survived so long as they got this company’s treatment up to two days after infection… all the animals that didn’t get the drug died…
“But that’s not all…
“So far, the drug has proven to protect mice from Marburg and Ebola…
“Plus it has protected guinea pigs from Ebola, Marburg, and Yellow Fever.
“The Department of Defense has the ultimate aim of using this treatment to protect the world from virus threats (including Ebola, Marburg, and Yellow Fever), high priority pathogens, natural outbreaks, and bio-threats.
“And one of the key selling points of this treatment is that it’s small and might be stable enough to ship and stockpile wherever it’s needed.”
And this:
“This Company Has a History of Profiting from These ‘News Event’-Triggered Trends
“The company has five products that are already in Phase 2 (of 3) of development.
“Back in 2005, this company partnered with Johnson and Johnson to develop an experimental flu vaccine…
“Currently, this drug is being sold in Korea and Japan. It was submitted for final FDA approval in December 2013. Once the FDA approves it, sales will begin in America. According to a report from Ibis World, annual revenue for the cough and cold industry totals approximately $8 billion…”
This one has gotten attention during almost every public health scare/outbreak — Biocryst Pharmaceuticals (BCRX). They are testing an Ebola drug in animals (non-human primates) soon, they say, and I expect you can find a thousand different opinions on this one. Dr. KSS discussed it briefly because of their Hepatitis C drug earlier in the Summer, we covered it a year or two ago when it was teased for the bird flu outbreak, and it was a top performer among teased stocks for that year, but I’m afraid, well, I’m out of time — I’ll give it to the peanut gallery to see what you think.
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54 Comments on "What are the “‘Ebola Tech Plays’ Set to Skyrocket” from Teeka Tiwari?"
well done again captain oh captain!
Why no mention of NNVC(Nanoviricide)? Their technology applies to many different viral mediated diseases.
NNVC has no plausible-in-the-slightest technology. Pure junk science,
Anyone familiar with alternative medicine will at least try to get a bottle of nano silver water. After all it is a natural antibiotic. Another question—–would blood irradition work against ebola???
Silver is completely bogus, It is snake oil. Blood irradiation would do nothing for Ebola
I absolutely LOVE you Doc I can’t stand the morons who think “Alternatives” Will prove ALL the educated Allopathic Doctors wrong. I have seen in my industry [ Horses}] where these fake so called “practitioners” with zero credentials other than they worked at a Vet clinic and saw with their own eyes how those evil Doctors were literally killin animals with their poison. Balah balh blah adnauseu. They always tout THEIR Special emedies and scream how the Vet is wrong and ONLY they have the REAL cure. Go get em Doc!
NNVC’s approach is deceptive. The action of a “nanoviricide” in culture is meaningless. Junk science that rational investors should avoid like….Ebola.
Dr. KSS I understand your words about the situation in Africa but I also believe in investing. I subscribe to Teeka’s newsletter and our Gumshoe is exactly correct in the stocks he named.
That the correct stocks were named is not in dispute, My point is that none are likely to make any money for shareholders. If you believe in investing, you surely are wary of sucker stocks, and Ebola plays are mostly just that. Spend time in Africa and you will know the outlandish futility of which I speak. What good’s a $10,000 schmancy Ebola drug when you cannot even correct the patient’s potassium of 2.5?
While you have a point about conditions in Africa, the author presents a solid case for animal spirits to drive the stocks just like they have in the past. Regardless of the facts, its a momentum play. I agree Timira is a short.
When I worked there it was too difficult to test for potassium, they used an old flame test. Perhaps better test exist now, but I don’t know how many codes l go to in the US where the underlying etiology is hyperkalemia, high K+. Ultimately, in a severe dehydrated state in Africa,the kidneys may fail and hyperkalemia may be the cause of death.
Just one minor point,,I understand tobacco for ZMAPP is GMO and is being grown in greenhouses so it has less chance to get dna into commercial crop. That may bring enough available, sooner than field grown would. Otherwise total agreement.
Hi Vivian. GSK is being roiled by people demanding CEO ouster.
I have taken a small position in each of the three stocks that Gumshoe named accurately. (I subscribe to Teeka’s newsletter.) I will watch closely for a spike and then probably get out quick. I have already made the mistake of thinking that a slight dip means nothing, only to see an investment drop in minutes.
Thanks! You know far more than I do. We had some slow loading in the past, though it should be greatly improved for at least 99 percent of you now. It’s possible that even some script or cache is corrupt on your machine — using an alternate browser or anonymous setting can help determine if that’s the case.
Cookies remain for up to a day or so to keep folks logged in, but we’ve been advised against extending that too much.
Great write up and advice Will.
HOLY SHMOLEY.
Ok, that’s the one kind of reply I did not expect to see. And absolutely great advice.
Lost; How fast is your connection Ie do you have dialup? Do other websites load reasonably fast or are they all slow? Do you have access to another computer you could compare speed with. It could be your Isp or you may need to install a new or updated browser,,,,,I find Chrome to be fastest for me although I mainly use FireFox.
We have Google scripts running on the page both for our internal search, which Google currently handles, and for ads — so that could be an issue, more likely our google search script.
Thanks for that Travis. And yes I think that is my problem. In my earlier comment I forgot to add that while waiting for your site to open, the little (whatchacallit) down at the bottom of the screen says: connecting to, or waiting on, http://www.google.com. And like I said earlier google has been screwed up ever since it was blocked a few months ago.
So that being the case, there’s really not a thing I can do about this? right? except to just hope it gets better in time?
Thanks for your help Travis
LostOkie
If you use a script blocker and/or an ad blocker plugin for your browser that might very well solve the problem for you. Doing that shouldn’t dramatically impact anything else on most of our pages, I don’t think, though it will remove our search bar function. I have not tried them and can’t guarantee they won’t screw something up, but I think there’s at least one for Firefox called NoScript.
I’ve been using ccleaner for years on a number of PCs and laptops, and always run the registry cleaner. Not once have I encountered any problems with their registry cleaner, and it doesn’t require any advanced computer knowledge. I simply run it and instruct it to fix all of the errors it found with one mouse click.
Thanks Will,
To kind of show just how much a non-techie I am, I remember downloading CCleaner once and then never used it for fear of what I was going to screw up. LOL But like I said, I’ve saved your instructions and I suppose I should take the time to do that little job, a little at a time like you said.
Thanks again
LostOkie
ps: one question. “they do prompt for a backup” Can I backup by creating a restore point in Windows restore? or do I need to do something different here?
Keith I think Travis has it ,,,,google scripts being slowed by China. Are you using Chrome as browser,,,,that is also google. I.E. Firefox or Opera may load faster,,,,,costs nothing except time to download and try.
Hi Frank,
Thanks for your help also. And yes I think Travis has gotten to the bottom of this for me. I use Firefox. tried Chrome once, been some time back, because I’d heard so much about how fast it was. But for me here it was much, much slower than Firefox. Maybe that same google thing here in China. Thanks for your help Frank. Have a good day
LostOkie
Lost, the fastest browser I have found, and I have tried almost all of them, is Comodo Dragon. It’s a stripped down version of Google Chrome and it’s free . It is also one of the most secure browsers.
Thanks Pockets. I haven’t heard of that one. May give it a try.
LostOkie
I LOVE THIS ANALYSIS AND THE GOOD DOCTOR’S SAGE COMMENTARY. I always heed my doctor’s advice. Avoid these stocks for now, they are a trap and I doubt if anything but a lab mouse or rat will get the full treatment. (Get trapped for certain).
Hey Terrence,
Dr. KSS has already written about NBY (He is positive on the company and holds a long position in the stock). I see that you are an irregular, so I’m not sure how you didn’t know this already, but if you read Dr. KSS’s articles and subscribe to the threads, you will find a lot of valuable discussions.
Thanks, I only recently became a “regular subscriber” so I missed Dr. KSS’s previous article on NBY. I’ll look it up.
Reading about Ebola ; what about your thoughts on MAPP in San Diego, I think they supplied the drug that saved the 2 Americans that were infected.
@ mkamcooney….
ZMapp was developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, a privately held company. PHAC Zmab licensed to Defyrus, and then to Leaf Bio. Read about the connections here: http://www.mappbio.com/ZMAb.pdf
Bavarian Nordic is a vaccine specialist and they are going “all in” making an Ebola according to danish newspapers. They have also just made a contract with the Canadians regarding smallpox vaccine.
But I do not believe their stocks will run up considerably even if they become a sole supplier! After all as Dr. Kiss has explained Ebola is only a large problem in Africa!
@Elliot… I agree with your thinking that J&J is doing work on ebola for humanitarian reasons. The company has a rich history of helping out during times of need.
I think that J&J is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of J&J.
ooops. I meant that Crucell is now a wholly-owned sub of J&J.
“big long computer vacuum cleaner” :>) :>) :>) !!
how to speed up your computer link by Will which rather took the site over
He was trying to help me out with a problem. Sorry it bothered you so.
vivian any thoughts on bdraf
dear who noze
what does this have to do with Ebola? why don’t you just sign up for http://www.global-investing.com if you want to know about a Canadian aircraft and railway manufacturer?
we are a business.
@Travis…. The Tekmira drug TKM-ebola is a curative drug. It’s not a vaccine.