According to recent data from GoodRX, an app tracking drug prices, only 3% of insurance claims for Eli Lilly’s insulin were for the half-price version that the company revealed shortly before being questioned by Congress on soaring insulin prices.
According to the article, many pharmacists do not know that a cheaper version is available or it cannot be accessed because it wasn’t added to individual patient’s list of drugs that are covered.
The company said it was aggressively working to increase awareness as well as access to the cheaper diabetes drug.
Analysis and Comments
Best Healthcare analysts expect a strong downward pricing pressure and slowing volume growth for the previous classes of drugs such as DPP4 and basal insulins.
This will likely result in a slowdown in the sales growth for the global pharmaceutical market. We project the global diabetes pharma market to grow at only 3% CAGR to reach $46bn by 2025.
While the overall diabetes pharma market is set to slow, GLP1 and SGLT4 are likely to experience rapid growth.
US-based electric bus maker Proterra, which may be looking to go public, is planning another fundraising round that is likely to push the company to a unicorn-class valuation of US$1bn.
The company supplies transit buses to cities across the US and employs a number of former Tesla engineers and executives.
The private equity sale (which the company registered on August 2nd) could raise up to US$75m in support of the company’s planned expansion beyond transit buses and into a new business unit aimed at selling EV components such as its batteries and motors.
Analysis and Comments
The bus sector is the easiest to electrify because of the predetermined nature of the driving routes which makes it easier and less costly to set up charging points. This explains why 60% of the bus fleet in Chinese cities is already electric.
The bus sector contributes 10% to road related emissions despite being less than 1% in terms of the vehicle fleet. Electrification of bus fleets in Europe and the US will likely speed up over the next 5 years.
Chinese companies such as BYD will likely capture the bulk of the international electric bus market,especially short range city buses (also called transit buses). This will be because of their clear cost advantage versus western OEMs. Companies like Proterra are hence focussing on higher value longer range electric buses.
In today’s video we discuss bitcoin’s micro and macro trend. We’ll talk about potential next moves, key areas to watch and so much more. I hope you find it helpful.
I hope this has been helpful. I’d be happy to answer any questions in the comment section below. Until next time, wishing you safe and profitable trading.
Workin
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According to Twitter, more than500m gaming-related tweets were sent in H1 2019, a 20% increase yoy. In 2018, gaming topics topped 1bn tweets for the first time.
While the US seems to be tweeting the most about gaming, Japan hastaken the top spot in the past year as the topic is becoming more global.
Following last week’s mass shootings and President Trump’s condemning remarks about video games, several supportive hashtags such as #VideoGamesAreNottoBlame and #GamersAreGood started trending on the platform.
Analysis and Comments
Given the recent series of high-profile gaming-related news (the political debate, but also a number of milestones and records achieved across esports events such as the Fortnite and Dota 2 World Championships), the uptick in tweets does not seem surprising.
In a way, it is yet another sign that playing video gaming and watching esports is becoming more socially accepted/”mainstream”.
With the steady increase in esports viewership numbers and the continued strong demand for video games, we expect this trend to continue.
On a side note, Chinese video gaming giant Tencent and Chinese livestreaming platform Huya reported Q2 figures this week, both showing continued growth in mobile revenues and mobile users, respectively.
I hope this has been helpful. I’d be happy to answer any questions in the comment section below. Until next time, wishing you safe and profitable trading.
Workin
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The DAX is a blue chip stock market index consisting of the 30 major German companies trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. And Germany, the biggest economy in Europe is stalling. Germany is an export country and so they have been hit hard by the trade tariff between China and the US and the all the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.
You put all these issues in a pot and the finish product is an inevitable recession. An inevitable recession was further supported by the recent ZEW Survey. ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment is a leading indicator for the German economy. The recent ZEW Survey showed sentiment among investors fell to -44.1 from -24.5 in July, its lowest since Dec. 2011.
This past weekend I talked about how the latest AccuWeather 2019 crop production analysis predicts a significant decline from last year’s corn and soybean yield. And how this past Monday, the fate of many farmers would be decided by the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) is a monthly report that forecast supply and demand for major crops (global and United States) and livestock (U.S. only). But this was another example of why I don’t really care about reports, news or Trump twits because price action trumps everything and the chart suggested corn prices were going to decline.
The Agriculture Department on Monday said farmers planted a bigger corn area than analysts estimated and pegged crop yields that also exceeded expectations, sparking the biggest rout in futures since 2013. That was a blow to growers who were holding back supplies, hoping a rally that started in May due to delayed sowing would extend through the fall.
“This is a huge disappointment for farmers that have already been struggling with a lot of uncertainty with this corn crop, trade wars and what have you,” said Tanner Ehmke, manager of the research team at CoBank, a $138 billion lender to the agriculture industry. “A lot of people were banking on the opportunity to sell at much higher prices. This report now really brings that into question.”
I do feel story for all the farmers in the Midwest as they have just been reduced to pawns, as Trump continues to play chess with China. And like the big Ag companies, I would love to teach those farmers how to hedge their crops with futures so they can protect themselves win, lose or draw.
If there was one message I could send the farmers, it would be the chart suggests price will retest the weekly demand at $356.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Interesting article from Bloomberg showing that people/investors are willing to pay a premium when the geopolitical or monetary situation in their respective countries is worsening.
This is the ultimate sign that Bitcoin is a hedge against risks. Government & Currency Wise.
Here are some extracts of this article.
In Argentina, where the peso plunged on election uncertainty, Bitcoin was recently trading for as much as $12,000 on LocalBitcoins.com, a peer-to-peer platform, or 10% higher than on many international crypto exchanges. The token was trading at about a 4% premium in Hong Kong, where continued anti-government protests are raising fears of retaliation.
“Bitcoin is becoming the asset of last resort in areas of extreme currency devaluation and political uncertainty,” said Rayne Steinberg, chief executive officer at Los Angeles-based crypto hedge fund Arca. *
“In the last week alone, Bitcoin is up approximately 50% against the Argentine peso and trading at a significant premium on local exchanges. And they are not alone, joining the ranks of Venezuela, Hong Kong and Turkey who have also experienced similar shocks.”
The premiums would seem to support the argument that Bitcoin is a means of protecting assets from plunges in local currencies and authoritarianism. Even so, the cryptocurrency has tumbled about 8% to around $10,890 this week, increasing the risk for investors in troubled nations of moving from one volatile asset to another.
In the past month many advocates have been pointing to the increased negative correlation with U.S. equities as proof that investors were turning to Bitcoin as a haven. That narrative proved to unravel this week as the inverse relationship broke down.
And you, What would you do if you were in Argentina or Hong-Kong at this very moment?
The yield for the longest-dated Treasury bond is now a hair’s breadth away from plumbing its lowest level in history.
Investors said the $22 trillion U.S. government debt market was now approaching this key milestone on a combination of factors including the growing world of negative-yielding government bonds, expectations for Fed easing spurred by rising recession concerns, and the absence of inflation pressures.
The 30-year Treasury bond yield TMUBMUSD30Y, +1.26% ended at 2.13% on Monday, following a relentless rally in long-term government bonds in the past few weeks. The 30-year yield is only a few basis points away from its all-time low set in July 2016, when it touched 2.09% after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.
So what’s the significance of the 30 year bond yield reaching all-time lows?
Well Interest rates and bond prices are inversely correlated, meaning when one goes up, the other goes down.
Because a bond’s payout is fixed, as interest rates go up, the existing bond becomes less attractive because people want to buy the new bond that pays more interest. So to make the existing bond more attractive, the value of that existing bond decreases.
And as the global and US economy continue to slow down, Fed Powell won’t have any choice, but to lower rates again…possible two more times this year. So I personally expect the 30 year bond to continue to go up in value.
The chart suggests price will move higher to the monthly supply at 174’00.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Back in late March Lyft made their debut on the stock exchanged and opened at $72 per share. Lyft is now down 18% since its IPO. Despite the positive earnings last week, which included raising their full-year outlook, Lyft has further downside. There have been countless questions and discussions surrounding Lyft’s business model.
In fiscal 2019, Lyft expects to generate revenue of at least $3.47 billion with an adjusted EBITDA loss of $850 million to $875 million. In 2018, Lyft’s EBITDA’s loss was around $850 million. Thus, Lyft may never make a profit, nor do they have a clear path to profitability.
But here is why I think Lyft is a short now. During their earnings announcement last week, where they reported raised their full-year outlook, Lyft said they are cutting down their lock-out period from late Sept. to Aug 19th.
“The lock-up period is scheduled to end on September 24, 2019, which falls within the Company’s quarterly blackout period that commences at the end of the day on August 31, 2019,” the company said in the filing. “Therefore, in accordance with the lock-up agreements with the underwriters, the lock-up period will end at the open of trading on August 19, 2019, which is ten trading days prior to the commencement of the Company’s quarterly blackout period. The Company will also release the market standoff agreements when the lock-up period expires.”
Lyft expects that about 257.6 million shares of Class A common stock may become eligible for sale in the public market beginning August 19. This includes about 12.8 million of Class B shares of common stock converted into Class A stock.
Newly public companies are typically subject to a lock-up period preventing insiders including founders, directors and other employees from selling their shares for a designated period of time. The restriction is intended in large part to prevent these investors from injecting large numbers of shares into the market, which could send stock prices lower by quickly increasing supply.
So there are about 274 million shares outstanding. The founders, institutions that bought a stake in the company before going public want to cash out. We are talking about potentially diluting the float (float is the number of shares actually available for trading) by almost 100%.
August 19th simply becomes a supply and demand issues, very similar to the supply and demand issues on Steem. It’s way too expensive to short the stock by borrowing shares due to the borrowing rates, which was once 100%. Thus, the best way to short Lyft is through options. But give yourself so time for the trade to work. The leap options, January 2012 options are too illiquid. But the January 2020 put options gives one plenty of time for the trade to work, which also includes time for an additional two earnings report (which may not meet expectations).
So if you think Lyft will at least test the lows within the next five months,
Consider buying some January 2020 put options with a strike price at $50, but first ensure its liquid enough.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
