Cancer Stocks Slide Again

After plunging in the week following ASCO, cancer-related stocks merely underperformed this week.

The list below, with data from StockVal, is comprised of domestic companies primarily with market caps in excess of $50mm, ranked by the return this past week.

The number of double-digit declines decreased from 12 to just 4, but there were no double-digit gainers. The median return of 0.0 and the average return of -0.3 trailed the S&P 500 significantly (-1.6% and -2% respectively). Of all the weaker stocks, only IDM Pharma (IDMI) remains up month-to-date. The 20% decline this week almost erased the strong gains thus far in June. The company suffered management losses and a tough FDA rejection in May but is still up year-to-date. Telik (TELK) continued its death march after an FDA failure for its lead drug in the prior week. Late Friday, though, the company received news that the full hold had been converted to a partial hold on Telcyta clinical trials. Genvec (GNVC) is having a horrible month, but it remains up strongly year-to-date. It is sitting on pretty solid support at this point and remains in an uptrend. For those not familiar, the company is working on a vaccine to treat pancreatic cancer. Finally, Zila (ZILA) saw its CEO depart as the corporate governance investigation nears an end. Zila focuses on oral cancer detection.

This week, the report includes two additional items. First, I have included a subset of the list (Momentum) above that meets the following parameters: 4-week outpeformance (S&P 500) of 3% or more, 13-week outperformance of 10% or more and Price Momentum Index of <2. The second group (Rebound) has 4-week outperformance of >5%, 13-week underperformance of <5% and Price Momentum Index of <0.

Showing Momentum

(Note that several of these are in the process of being acquired)

Potential Rebounds

If the reader believes that there are erroneous inclusions or exclusions, feel free to let me know.

Disclosure: Long ISRG

Comments

[AlanBrochstein]

I wanted to point out an error in the article - GNVC is developing a pancreatic cancer treatment (not vaccine).