A disease: professional capital eaters
By Thom Calandra, FT MarketWatch.com Last Update: 5:45 AM ET Nov 14, 2000 NewsWatch Latest headlines
LONDON (FTMW) -- There are growing signs that individuals are becoming just as comfortable with ejecting stocks as they were at year-end 1999 with buying them.
Tax-loss selling will accelerate as investors head toward the end of the calendar year with gaping losses, most professionals agree.
Turnover ratios for stocks, at the same time, are increasing. New York Stock Exchange monthly turnover was 94 percent on an annualised basis in October versus 83 percent the previous month. (See NYSE data.) Shorter holding periods for equities suggest individual and institutional investors are more willing than a year ago to sell money losers and bag profits on their rare winners.
"Professional capital eaters" are making it their business to book immediate gains, whether they are sitting at their kitchen laptops or in a Wall Street or London ivory tower. (See the column that coined the phrase PCEs.)
'Profit concealed'
There may be, as California newsletter writer and armchair psychologist James Dines says, "a profit concealed in every loss." Yet the slide in worldwide tech shares is taking its toll on portfolios and is bound to be felt in property markets next year and perhaps even during this year's holiday shopping season.
The latest untouchable stock group to fall are the biomedical developers. Biotech indexes lost more than 10 percent of their value in a day. Stalwarts such as Biogen (BGEN: news, msgs) and Immunex (IMNX: news, msgs) have been losing ground for weeks. Giant Amgen (AMGN: news, msgs), with a $64 billion valuation, is faring better but still sits 23 percent from a July high.
Just as cash burn hit Internet stocks hard, so too are biotech stocks suffering from the threat that developmental drugs and drug-delivery methods won't receive American regulatory approvals. About 80 percent of drugs undergoing clinical trials never receive Food and Drug Administration approvals.
More punishment?
To be sure, biotech executives are as dedicated as ever to their research and to their stock prices. "Companies that are going to be strong can weather short-term variations," said a Targeted Genetics (TGEN: news, msgs) vice president for business development, Michael Burke, in Berlin. (See the story.)
Yet if investors continue what they have started this week, they will punish biotech stocks, deservedly or not. The group is still priced at roughly double its valuation of a year ago. Some issues, like aptly named Millennium Pharmaceuticals (MLNM: news, msgs), are still sitting on eye-popping stock gains while recording staggering losses. Millennium hunts for mutated genes that can provide clues to deadly diseases. It spent $69 million on research in the third quarter yet still had $679 million in cash and securities as of Sept. 30.
Dines, the newsletter writer who has been picking stocks since 1961 or so, is sticking with some of his biomedical favorites. These include Immune Response Corp. (IMNR: news, msgs),which he first recommended at the price of 8 3/4. Shares of the company, which is developing a vaccine to fight the HIV virus, sell for about $4. One recent report said the vaccine, Remune, failed to slow progression of the virus.
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