Como se combate o populismo? "Com eleições", responde Fukuyama

[J_99]

O momento actual dos mercados é marcado pelas commodaties, energia e metais preciosos, qual será o próximo? Quais as V. apostas para um médio/longo prazo?


THE ADVISERS' CORNER: Life Sciences and Biotech: A Trillion-Dollar Aggressive-Growth Sector -- By Michael Shulman

I view life sciences in a manner that is far different from traditional Wall Street analysts.

Life sciences and biotech are no longer speculative investments, and they need not be with the right stock picking. Biotech and life sciences companies are sitting in front of a trillion-dollar trend as the aggressive growth companies of the early 21st century, driven by baby boomers and a trillion-dollar investment in new technology during the past generation.

With more than 1,000 publicly traded life sciences companies, individual investors can invest in real companies with real products and revenue, not molecules and dancing mice. Wall Street loves molecules and mice that dance -- the doctors-turned-analysts get to show off their expensive and relatively useless education -- and this creates significant differences of opinion that can produce huge returns for individual investors.

The hard data from our proprietary ChangeWave Alliance surveys that we have been conducting for more than four years shows us where Wall Street is wrong, and how its fixation on science causes investors to miss wonderful opportunities. These discontinuities exist in many market segments, and we will cover some of these segments below.

BIOTECH

These firms are the new frontier of life sciences and aggressive-growth investing. Biotech has been viewed as the land of molecules, not money, but times have changed thanks to 25 years of investment in new technologies.

Investors and patients are seeing new treatments for cancer, the first wholly new treatment of diabetes in 80 years, 15-minute diagnostic tests, vaccines made in bioreactors and drugs successful within targeted patient groups with a common genetic background.

Wall Street's View: Love those molecules; trade on the headlines -- their products will be great nine years from now; those are the ones you should invest in.

My View: Invest in money, not molecules. There are enough mature biotech companies, with little scientific risk and moderate regulatory risk, that individual investors can avoid in-vitro companies and buy a company a lot more solid than a headline about new trial data.

My Favorites: BioCryst (cancer and pandemic flu) and Emisphere (oral formulations of previously injectable drugs).

GENERIC DRUGS

These companies are the best-managed companies in the life sciences industry. Teva Pharmaceutical generates 30 times more revenue per salesperson than Pfizer, the best of the Big Pharma companies. There is no secret formula here. Investors need to look at product portfolios and management, and then choose the winners accordingly. The "best of the breed" in this segment also sell proprietary drugs.

Wall Street's View: They're just manufacturers with no proprietary advantages.

My View: The best-managed companies in the entire industry are in this segment!

My Favorite: Teva Pharmaceutical is a compelling buy due to a one-time soft earnings announcement.

MEDICAL DEVICES

This is a very broad market segment with some slow growers and some companies seeing consistent 50%-plus growth rates.

Wall Street's View: The best analysis of any segments of the life sciences industry is in this sector, except the Street tends to ignore companies involved in cosmetic medicine. Still, they do not understand the little guys very well and tend to stick with the big caps way too much.

My View: This is a wonderful opportunity for investors as these products are easy to understand and easy for the ChangeWave Alliance to track through surveys. For the next year, stick with the cosmetic medicine/equipment firms -- they are printing money.

My Favorite: Palomar Medical, market leader in devices to remove hair and tattoos, as well as repair veins, and it has a special partnership for home products with Procter & Gamble.

COSMETIC MEDICINE

Cosmetic medicine is the fastest-growing major industry in the United States -- 25% per annum at least, ranging from tattoo and hair removal to gastric bypass surgery and facial reconstruction after major traumas. Wall Street still misunderstands this market segment, although recent merger and acquisition activity has put it in the spotlight.

Wall Street View: Recent merger and acquisition activity has highlighted this segment, but analysts are still underestimating growth.

My View: The ChangeWave Alliance was ahead of Wall Street by at least two years in identifying it as the best growth opportunity in the entire life sciences segment.

My Favorite: Allergan, a big, somewhat conservative play with very good growth rates and a tremendous product line.

SCANNING AND IMAGING

This is a very large market segment with few investment opportunities due to market dominance by gigantic, diversified multinationals -- GE, Philips, Siemens and Toshiba.

Wall Street's View: Again, the lack of coverage and the volatility of many of the small companies in this space turns off many professional investors.

My View: This is a tough market to find mature companies that are reasonably priced. I am biased toward smaller-niche players such as software company Vital Images.

My Favorite: The above-mentioned Vital Images has the best software for advanced scanning available and is working on a foolproof virtual colonoscopy.

DIAGNOSTICS AND TESTING

Genetic testing and screening is the frontier of this segment. Companies serving major markets, such as Biosite with its Triage BNP test for congestive heart failure, and literally print money with margins above 70%.

Wall Street's View: The Street has a total misunderstanding of the importance of patient convenience and physician profitability when evaluating this market -- they just don't get it. This creates wonderful discontinuities for individual investors.

My View: Patients like something (anything) that is convenient. Doctors like to make money, regulators like something that works better than what is already on the market and insurers like to save money.

My Favorite: ChangeWave Biotech Investor buy list company Cepheid, which is about to break out with extremely strong growth rates in clinical test market segments.

GENOMICS AND INFRASTRUCTURE

This segment includes companies using genetic manipulation to create new treatments and drugs as well as companies supplying tools and databases to support gene research.

Wall Street's View: There's a lot of science here with lots of big words, so this segment gets a lot of coverage on Wall Street. In this segment, analysts drive stocks, so you need to be careful of Wall Street's views.

My View: Based on fundamentals, this is a tough segment for investors as most companies, even market leaders, are not generating a lot of revenues or profits. But it is at the very bleeding edge of the developments that drive much of the rest of the life sciences industry, so investors must take note.

My Favorite: None -- however, some companies to note are Human Genome Sciences, Affymetrix, Illumina, Luminex and Sequenom).

This is a big market segment with more than 1,000 companies, and is the next great aggressive-growth area for individual investors. This is not speculative investing because you can minimize downside risk -- so put your fear aside and invest in the trillion-dollar trend.

Michael Shulman
Editor
ChangeWave Biotech Investor

P.S. Along with the companies I covered today, there are plenty more stocks that are set to take off, and I detail seven more of them in my e-book, "The Boomer Effect: Riding The Unstoppable Wealth Wave."