After Roche (RHHBY) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Ignyta (RXDX), a company focused on precisely targeted cancer therapeutics guided by diagnostic tests, in a transaction valued at $1.7B, Wall Street analysts are opining on what read-through this deal may have on other smaller companies exploring similar areas of oncology. ROCHE AGREEMENT: Roche announced this…
Top tickers for midday: TWX, BAC, AAPL, C, AMD, TSLA.
Ethereum and Bitcoin Bitcoin is firmly in correction mode, so the attention of mainstream media shifts to other cryptocurrencies which might not be done going up for the moment. In an article on Yahoo Finance, we read: (…) bitcoin is actually on the lower end, as far as cryptocurrency volatility goes. Ethereum has increased more than…
When most Americans think of hotels, they think of the most familiar names where, on every continent but Antarctica, they can get a room for the night or longer. Hotels mean temporary shelter, rooms with a very short minimum rental period to a maximum of staying forever. Most of them have already risen mightily this…
There has been much discussion of the small-cap premium recently. Has its popularity cannibalized its utility? Are large firms preventing a level playing field? Will the small-cap premium exist going forward? This article does not address these concerns directly, but it does identify and analyze another potential issue that could diminish the utility of small…
Bitcoin has become a buzz word in the investing community, not as an alternate currency unit replacing the fiat money, but as an asset class with a spectacular 1,600%+ return this year, valuation almost doubled just in the December month alone. Bitcoin was heading towards $20,000 before pulling back to today’s $15,000 level. The entire…
The city of Lexington, Virginia recently updated their zoning ordinance to include restrictions on short-term rentals (STRs), including Airbnbs. Colloquially called Airbnb laws, these regulations are common in large cities, but smaller cities take a larger risk of harming their economy by restricting one of the many cottage industries providing income to residents. By capping…
The US housing market looks steaming hot, at least according to the annualized level of new home sales which jumped by 17.5% to 733K.Is this an outlier? It may be so. The figure for November was revised down to 624K, quite a big change from 685K originally published. The final read of consumer confidence from…
It looks like Bitcoin topped and prices are down 30% as I write. After surpassing $15,000 in December, the next logical level to strike was $20,000. Prices fell short reaching $19,891.00 before running out of buyers. Here is a snapshot of December 17th when I thought prices might have topped. Here is the current snapshot….
(from my colleague Dr. Win Thin) In the EM equity space as measured by MSCI, Peru (+8.2%), Chile (+7.0%), and Qatar (+5.0%) have outperformed this week, while Korea (-1.5%), Russia (-1.4%), and Mexico (-1.2%) have underperformed. To put this in better context, MSCI EM rose 2.0% this week while MSCI DM rose 0.7%. In the…
