Biogen Plunges After MS Drug Fails to Meet Primary Endpoint

Even when you’re invested in a diverse, revenue and earnings generating machine, like Biogen, failed clinical trials for important pipeline drugs can wreak havoc in investors portfolios.

In the study, opicinumab missed the primary endpoint, a multicomponent measure evaluating improvement of physical function, cognitive function, and disability. However, evidence of a clinical effect with a complex, unexpected dose-response was observed.

Opicinumab also did not meet the secondary efficacy endpoint in Synergy, which evaluated the slowing of disability progression. Safety and pharmacokinetics were also assessed as secondary endpoints.

Opicinumab was generally well-tolerated and the safety profile was consistent with what has been observed in prior studies. Opicinumab showed a linear, well-behaved PK profile over the studied dose range. Synergy results will be presented at future medical meetings.

That’s about $6 billion in market cap wiped out because of a phase 2 trial. Utterly ridiculous. There are better ways to get rich, than cavort inside of these biotech fun houses.

This is very bad news for our good friends over at Pershing Square. These earning are an abomination. Massive earnings guide down.

Hey, but the good news is, according to new CEO, Joe Potato Head, the company will report bad earnings on time from here on forth.

Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $1.27 per share, $0.10 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus of $1.37; revenues rose 9.3% year/year to $2.37 bln vs the $2.34 bln Capital IQ Consensus.

Co lowers guidance for FY16, sees EPS of $6.60-7.00 (Prior $8.50-9.50) vs. $8.51 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY16 revs of $9.90-10.01 bln (Prior $11.0-11.2 bln) vs. $10.92 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; Sees Adj-EBITDA of $4.80-4.95 bln (Prior $5.60-5.80 bln)

“The first quarter’s results reflect, in part, the impact of significant disruption this organization has faced over the past nine months,” said Joseph Papa, chairman and chief executive officer. “This has been a difficult period for Valeant and its stakeholders, and while there are some challenges to work through in certain business operations in 2016, such as our U.S. dermatology unit, the majority of our businesses are performing according to expectations. While we recognize that we did not meet the timeline for filing our first quarter results, with our filing expected this week, we will be current in our financial reporting. We have made progress toward stabilizing the organization over the past few months, and we expect to file our financial results in a timely manner going forward

The ultimate egg is all over Ackman’s face this morning.

Don’t pay attention to the cranky Fly in the rocking chair, smoking his pipe, throwing rocks at the kids playing on my lawn. Go ahead and keep pretending a GIGANTIC FUCKING METEOR isn’t heading straight for your pillowcase.

If I was running Toyota, I’d press my luck and issue $500 billion in bonds, then buy Apple with it. After I did that, I’d issue $2 trillion in bonds, then I’d buy the world (muuuaahhh).

Toyota Finance Corp. issued 20 billion yen ($186 million) of notes at a yield of 0.001 percent, according to a filing with the nation’s Finance Ministry. That’s the lowest coupon ever for a regular bond by a domestic company that isn’t backed by the government, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Bank of Japan has sent yields on Japanese government bonds below zero for notes out to 10 years since adopting a negative-rate policy in January, increasing demand for corporate debt. Average yields on Japanese company bonds dropped to 0.17 percent on Monday from 0.33 percent a year earlier, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch data.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, last month sold 60 billion yen of debt including 20-year bonds paying a yield of 0.343 percent.

This a perversion of finance. The basic laws of economics are being violated. Let’s see what happens when the degenerates push it too far.

Gold is looking pretty interesting to me right about now.

Thank you Puerto Rico. Now that Bernard Sanders has been shuffled aside to the trash heap of time, the real campaigning can begin, in earnest, for Team Hillary (yay!). This is a very historic moment for the United States, as the first woman is about to become the leader of the free world. The fucking bastard, Trump, stands in the way of true gender equality. God willing, he will contract herpes or gonorrhea and drop out of the race–permitting #TEAMHILLARY to make history, or might I say HERstory.

“We are on the brink of a historic and unprecedented moment but we still have work to do.
“We have six elections tomorrow and we’re gonna fight hard for every single vote, especially right here in California.”

This is all indelibly wonderful for the markets, as the specter of a generous Ebenezer Scrooge taking the White House, providing free stuff to all of the base creatures who traverse the gutters of America, would likely lead to a market rout not seen before since 1929.

I am sure you’re all super excited, in a very gender neutral way of course, to celebrate this momentous occasion with your life partners.

Cheers to Hillary and the first gentleman, Bill ‘the fucking rapist’ Clinton, for locking in the win. America needs some level headed Clinton-economics, right about now.

Catamites everywhere agree, June is the time to get back into stocks with full force and gusto. Along those lines of thinking, I’ve tapped into the cellars of Exodus to provide the world with the very best performing stocks for the month of June.

Here are stocks that fall within the guidelines of 75% win-rate, accompanied by their historical percentage gains, for June of course.

SAM +4.4%
INFY +4.99%
ILMN +5.1%
SKF +5.5% (indeud)
ULTA +4.6%
ZAGG +15%
DMRC +13%
ANAC +12%
LOCK +12%
YELP +12%
AMBA +12.6%

There are more. If I was running money now, I’d be in treasuries, cash and a basket of these fuckhead stocks–maybe YELP, ANAC and a commodity related stock of my choosing. The life of the market is born in commodities. Plain and simple, if you’re bullish on stocks, you’re an idiot for not having some sort of exposure. Additionally, healthcare and tech are the other pillars. Pick a solid stock, preferably away from the small cap arena and behave like a gentleman, or at least pretend that you’re one.

Wouldn’t it be funny if oil went back to $100? Oil stocks raced higher today. I mean, these things really took off, leaving boring REITs and bonds in the dust.

Stocks rose like Jesus from the tomb, by triple digits, to ingratiate all of its disciples who have been patiently waiting for the turn.

One could make the argument that stocks rose after the asshole, Lockhart, said the Fed should be patient, opting for a more dovish outlook on rates. Understand something, these are the most ridiculous trading days of your lives. You will reflect upon this era, pre-apocalypse, when the Fed would run around the country giving speeches, designed to trick and fool the public. I imagine, sometime in the future, these Fed heads will be brought up on charges, by the people, exiled from America–forced to walk on the other side of the wall, in the ravenous lands of Mexico for food and shelter.

I know, everyone made money and Le Fly is living out his days like a monk, in the house, smoking from his estate pipe. But you have to understand, I do not want to trade back and forth, to and fro, like some sort of paradiddle. Life has grander designs for House Fly, than to partake in a clownhouse with a bunch of baboons.

I am eating a mango now and becoming quite annoyed by it. The little strings are getting stuck in between my teeth, which is going to force me to go floss for the next 30 minutes until each and every fiber has been removed.

Also, it’s time for me to go to the gym, where I will attempt to injure myself through the lifting of things too heavy for my frame.

NOTE: I am not totally out of the game of stock picking. I have a portfolio running in Exodus, recently updated. One stock is up 65% since I added it and another is +15%. They’re some of my top thesis picks, heading into the elections, so join the halls of gentlemen in Exodus and absorb the expertise from a superior being.

This is reminiscent of when David Tepper, from the Short Hills shopping mall, tore down his former bosses $40 million hovel, mainly to spite him. Enter Stevie Cohen, Guy Fieri fanboy. While escaping imprisonment for the various crimes he committed while being a hedge fund manager, S. Cohen, feverishly, bid for a $62 million, piece of shit, mansion. He won the war. Now begins the arduous process of knocking the eyesore down, in order to build a better one.

That house was a traditional, shingled-style, 10,000-square-footer once owned by the late investment banker Robert McKeon, who committed suicide.

The home featured high ceilings, and antique oak and limestone floors, according to the listing. There was also a lofty, barn-style family room, a media room and a large master suite with ocean views.

Cohen’s new home can’t be bigger than the old one, thanks to the East End’s new anti-megamansion rules. Even underground rooms can’t expand past the width of the ground-floor walls.

The new house will feature a 9,700-square-foot first floor, while the second floor will be 4,620 square feet, and the basement will be 9,780 square feet, according to plans filed in East Hampton. There’s also a pool house.

Cohen already owns another beach mansion down the road on Further Lane, which he bought for $18 million.

I mean, look at this abomination.

Good thing he has another mansion on Further Lane. But, that one is a lot more spartan, only worth around $20 million. It is widely rumored that once construction of his new palace is complete, he will hang this perverted Picasso painting in it, which he purchased for the pedestrian price of $155 million.

I’ve been in the business since 1997. I’ve never seen the Fed talk so much shit. It’s outrageous, frankly. This is, without question, much worse than parsing Greenspan’s unbelievably difficult to understand doublespeak and much harder than determining the next Fed’s actions by the length of Bernanke’s beard.

Hellen’s beard is the longest of them all. This shit is unreal.

In a speech give today, Yellen warned Fed groupies to avoid taking 1 poor economic data point too seriously, calling it ‘transitory.’

The Fed is data dependent. Also, she posed a series of questions, in prepared remarked, asking whether the recent weakness in the jobs report was indicative of Americs being as ‘full employment’?

“Although this recent labor market report was, on balance, concerning, let me emphasize that one should never attach too much significance to any single monthly report,” she said in prepared remarks.

Still, Yellen said that an important theme of her remarks is the “inevitable uncertainty surrounding the outlook for the economy.”

“The uncertainties are sizable, and progress toward our goals and, by implication, the appropriate stance of monetary policy will depend on how these uncertainties evolve,” she said.
Key areas of uncertainty, she said, include the resilience of domestic demand, the international economic situation, productivity growth and the inflation outlook.

On domestic investment, Yellen said she suspects there’s a “transitory element” to recent weakness, but she acknowledged that labor market data “raise the less favorable possibility that firms may instead have decided to expand their operations more slowly.”

On the international front, Yellen said she is optimistic that foreign headwinds are fading, but added that the chance of a so-called “Brexit” could have “significant economic repercussions.” (Britain is holding a referendum on European Union membership later this month.)

“Is the markedly reduced pace of hiring in April and May a harbinger of a persistent slowdown in the broader economy? Or will monthly payroll gains move up toward the solid pace they maintained earlier this year and in 2015? Does the latest reading on the unemployment rate indicate that we are essentially back to full employment, or does relatively subdued wage growth signal that more slack remains?” she asked

She’s a clever one.

The logic is sublime. Since Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google look good, the entire market is poised to ‘melt up’, according to HSBC.

They also like industrials.

“The S&P 500 industrials sector has given a bull signal with momentum turning higher on the back of a positive cyclical trend indicator,” the analysts write, meaning that the slope of the 200-day moving average is showing positive momentum that could preface a further move higher.

Meanwhile, the heavyweight FANG stocks have been showing more strength following a tough start to 2016.

“This is further evidence that a melt up in U.S. stocks is becoming an increasing probability,” the HSBC analysts write, noting that the four stocks have broken through a so-called resistance line.

Stocks are melting higher today, incidentally, thanks to dovish comments by Fed’s Lockhart.

Since 2007, the Floridian citrus industry has been decimated due to citrus greening disease. It has afflicted massive damage to 75% of Flordia’s orange trees, which produce half of America’s orange juice. Cost of production has skyrocketed, as a result, and the price of orange juice has risen, in kind.

Today the futures are higher by more than 4%. The June production forecast will be released soon. Over the past 4 months, the forecast has risen steadily, now at 81 million boxes of oranges. Yet, in spite of the additional supply, prices are rising.

My guess, Moritmer and Mortimer are back, or people are gambling on a busy hurricane season.