Moon Kil Woong

Amgen Is a Healthy Buy - Barron's

Amgen has had healthy sales all through the recession. In fact rising profitability. It is not Denosumab that gives it a lot of value at this time. In fact its shares dropped because it can only be used on patients in critical condition because of it's profile of weakening the immune system.

The reason it trades at such a low value is because it's new drug pipeline is weak and it has gone through a bout of failed drugs.

As a value, I like Amgen as I mentioned before. However, I caution people not to buy on Denosumab hype. The reality is it's not the wonderdrug of tomorrow. Every analyst says it will only allow Amgen to get a small slice of the osteoporosis market (the people in the most critical conditions) and other similar drugs by other pharmas are in the pipeline.

If you want to play the FDA roulette game I suggest some other stock. Amgen has been quite bad at picking winning numbers.

Weekly Street Sentiment: Those Unexplained Phenomena

The market often moves without any real reason you can pinpoint. The fact that pundits make up a reason after the fact is the only content rationalists have. The reality of the market is it is moved the force of buyers sellers and arbitrators and their strategies. Save a few very strong indicators the market can easily drop 2-4% on no real fundamental news at all.

I know it is perplexing to the average investor, but you can see the dynamics on a trading floor not on CNBC. The rebound might have been people closing their hedge positions in hopes Obama will make it rain money or could be arbitrators closing their position to make the dow rise to the high 8,000 so they can sell it off again and make a windfall on those people losing their shirts on up and down volatility, or shorters taking their gains so they can short again later after the inauguration.

Most likely it was all these factors and did not show any long term consensus up or down. So the market goes...