utenzi

I've owned 1,000 shares in a small biopharmaceutical company named ARCA biopharma (ABIO) for 9 months now. The company's principal focus is developing genetically-targeted therapies for heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases. I bought during a downturn in their fortunes. As you can see in that graph on the left, of the past of the stocks performance, things were rather bleak last June. I saw the stock fall and bought when it leveled out at $5 a share (see asterisk). Unfortunately the slide soon continued and the stock went down to $3 a share, eventually getting down to $2.20 in mid-July. At that point I was down $2,800 --- at least on paper. As you can see from the graph, the stock didn't move much for quite a while. Today is a different story. ARCA Biopharma announced a patent issued to it for treating heart failure patients with Bucindolol. This has caused the stock to surge. I sold during a momentary lull early this morning and made an $800 profit. The stock im...

What a nasty surprise. For the first time in my life I ended up owing the government a substantial--at least for me--tax bill. In addition to what I have taken out of my salary, I ended up owning over $2,800 to Uncle Sam. Ouch. And what makes it worse to my mind is that the extra tax is due on money I don't have. Stock market stuff, you see. I had some tidy gains early last year then the tide turned and those gains evaporated away. I started my portfolio with $8k, saw it rapidly increase to $20k (thus the $3k tax bill instead of the usual $3k tax refund), but then it returned back to earth--dammit--and now all I have is a so-so 30% increase from my initial investment. This tax year I'll be able to deduct my losses but that won't help on the taxes since you can only use stock market losses to offset stock market gains, not salary. This might just teach me to pick some good quality stocks and stick with them, and not to play around with fly-by-night companies. Ha! Not likel...

I know that's a strange title for a post about the stock market but that's how I feel. You see, yesterday Pfizer issued a press release about a company, Encysive Pharmaceuticals, in which I owned stock. Now this is a troubled company, to say the least. I bought 7,000 shares of ENCY (the stock symbol for Encysive) on 6/19/2007 at an average price of $2.1157. That purchase was highly speculative and is the only holding in my Keough account. I admit it's a rather odd stock to hold in a retirement account but I like to take some risks. :-) In the past year, ENCY has been as high as $5.02 and as low as 59 cents. The stock has been threatened with being delisted from NASDAQ and that's essentially the kiss of death. The pink sheets aren't a place where a cash burning company like a biotech can exist for long. You might say the handwriting was on the wall for Encysive--and Pfizer took advantage of this to buy out the company yesterday for $195 million. Now that's not ...

Pfizer to Acquire Encysive Pharmaceuticals Acquisition Will Extend Presence in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension with Product Launched in Several EU Countries; Pfizer Plans Pivotal Trial to Support Registration in the U.S. NEW YORK & HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pfizer Inc today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ENCY), a publicly held biopharmaceutical company whose product for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is commercially available in much of the European Union and is approved in other markets. Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will make a cash tender offer for all issued and outstanding shares of Encysive for $2.35 per share, representing an equity value of approximately $195 million. Following completion of the tender offer, a subsidiary of Pfizer will merge with Encysive, with the outstanding Encysive shares not tendered pursuant to the tender offer converted into the right to receive the...

Here's another chapter in the story of volatile biotech stocks. I bought Avanir (AVNR) at the end of February when bad news pushed the stock down drastically. I paid $1.52 a share and since then it's been even lower--as low as $1.07, in fact. But as you can see to the left, Avanir has become more friendly to investors as a result of the positive results of their drug Zenvia. Here's an excerpt from an article in BusinessWeek : Drug developer Avanir Pharmaceuticals said Wednesday that a clinical trial showed its drug Zenvia significantly lessened nerve pain in diabetic patients. Avanir shares surged $1.08, or 85 percent, to $2.35 in electronic premarket activity, after closing at $1.27 Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Shares traded as high as $18.14 in February 2006 but have fallen sharply since, dropping to a low of $1.07 last month. In a late-stage clinical trial, patients with diabetic neuropathic pain were given Zenvia or placebo and asked to make daily journals entrie...