Sunday, January 5, 2014

Technical Analysis - Biotechs of Jan 2014

Several commentaries have indicated that the biotechnology sector has done well in 2013. In the ASX, there are 68 "Lifesciences and Biotechnology" companies and 54 "Equipment and Services" companies in the Healthcare sector. This is a relative small list of companies yet time consuming if we are to analyse individually.

Previously this blog has presented a few metrics to analyse biotech companies including:
- looking at qualifications of management, eg number of PhDs
- the number of products in Stage II or Stage III trials
- the number of quarters the current cash would last until

All these are good metrics, but from experience, biotechs have a tendency to crash on any news of setbacks on clinical trials including delays, even though the technology actually works.

Hence in the quick approach taken here is to just look at the price action of the stocks mainly and forget the fundamentals. In addition to the price, stocks with extremely low volume of trades are ignored. Those with relatively high dollar prices are ignored. The main price must have a good trend over the last month, this is of course very subjective.

So here are the biotech stocks that has been increasing nicely in recent times.


Sector: Healthcare 
Industry: Lifesciences and Biotechnology

SIP - Sigma Pharmaceutical
SUD - Suda Ltd
QRX - QRxPharma Ltd
MYX - Mayne Pharma Group
NDL - Neural Discovery
ADO - Anteo Diagnostics
PBT - Prana Biotech
OBJ - OBJ Ltd
BXN - Bioxyne Ltd
BLT - Biotech Biopharma Ltd




Sector: Healthcare 
Industry: Equipment and Services

ELX - Ellex Medical Laser
FPH - Fisher and Paykel
SDI - SDI Ltd
ANN - Ansell
SHL - Sonic Healthcare
AHZ - Admedus Ltd
DRG - Draig Resources Ltd
UNS - Unilife Corp