Compared to others, today’s slate of earnings were relatively paltry — there were just 85 names in the Stocktwits community which were top of mind. However, several of them were biotech companies. Let’s just say that today was a bad day to be a bio.
Ocugen, Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Athersys, Immunogen, and AIM Immunotech ware just a few of the biotech names that were top of mind in the community today. However, their big “earnings day” was overshadowed by the entire bio sector moving lower. In fact, this story isn’t even about those companies at all (sorry to the bulls from these companies above.)
Instead, it’s about underscoring the punishing environment for high risk, growth stocks. Growth bulls know full and well that the last year has been troubling for their portfolios. The risk of higher yields has sent higher risk assets tumbling, and biotech carries a lot of overlap with growth.
Consequently, the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF has been in deep decline. The ETF, which counts many of the industry’s largest bio names among its ranks, fell by -5% today. With that, the index has erased its last five years of gains. We’ve seen some pretty fantastic crashes in terms of valuations, but few compare with this one:
In the Stocktwits trending tickers today, along with our star-studded bio earnings, were Direxion’s Daily S&P Biotech Bull 3X Shares (-15%) and Axsome Therapeutics (-18%.)