Biotech

  • Biotech investors take note – Eli Lilly are out for deals.
  • Eli Lilly and Co aims to announce roughly one $1 billion to $5 billion deal every quarter in 2020, its chief financial officer told Reuters, as the U.S. drugmaker looks to build up its pipeline of future products.
  • It will focus largely on earlier stage opportunities across key therapeutic areas including oncology, pain, immunology, and neurology

Very Long Term Real Rates

  • Bank of England have done a big long term study of real interest rates.
  • Paints a picture of ‘suprasecular‘ decline.
  • Against their long‑term context, currently depressed sovereign real rates are in fact converging ‘back to historical trend’ — a trend that makes narratives about a ‘secular stagnation’ environment entirely misleading, and suggests that — irrespective of particular monetary and fiscal responses — real rates could soon enter permanently negative territory.

Drug Pricing

  • Pharma companies are starting to really come into their own with introducing innovative ways of pricing.
  • Alnylam only charges the $575k price for givosiran if the effect seen is on par with clinical trials.
  • Novartis now collects the $2.1m price tag for Zolgensma over 5 years.
  • Sanofi are offering $99/month subscriptions for insulin.
  • Pricing is a big issue for US Pharmaceuticals. There are start-ups looking at this issue as well – Generics 2.0.

Stock Market Bulls

  • A few hedge fund managers, worth listening to, continue to be bullish.
  • David Tepper is one. “I love riding a horse that’s running” and continue to do so to a point”
  • Stanley Druckenmiller is another:
  • “I revealed a very bullish posture intermediate-term since October when Powell guaranteed he would not rescind the insurance [rate] cuts unless inflation was persistently above target,” Druckenmiller recalled. “Since then, both have worked out, and the Fed is still whining about inflation being below target.”
  • Trump “election prospects have increased with two trade agreements and big win in Iran, which the Democrats have responded poorly to,” Druckenmiller added. “So I am still ‘riding the horse’ and bullish immediate term,”
  • Disclaimer: Make sure you do your own work and use common sense when investing!

RICS Survey for UK

  • December post-election RICS survey was rather positive.
  • JPM write via AlphavilleThe RICS survey, which was post election, “showed a marked and regionally broad-based improvement in its forward looking questions,” says JP Morgan Cazenove. “The expected prices balance leapt from 1 to 23, expected sales shot up from 13 to 31 and new buyer enquiries surged from -5 to 17. These are comfortably the highest levels reported since before the referendum and, in one reading, have swung from below to above their long-run averages.
  • Full charts in the link.

Cancer Mortality Rates

  • New stats from the US Cancer Society show that between 1991 and 2017 the mortality rate of cancer has dropped 29%.
  • According to the report, this was due to lower smoking rates, improved early detection methods and advances in treatment.
  • This trend means more than 2.9m lives were saved since 1991.
  • Really amazing.
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