Current Universe

Hopefully, those who arrive at my site will enjoy the commentary and content I provide. To start, I will list some of my currently favorite stocks and brief comments:

CMED - My favorite stock to own. Chinese medical device company that is well positioned to receive significant revenues from the exploding Chinese healthcare economy and also in Europe/USA via their low cost/high quality product line. Will post more about this later.

MR - Another Chinese medical device company, mainly focused on diagnostics. They are the 'best of breed' medical co. in China who competes with the likes of GE and Siemens. Considering their product line is well respected for high quality amongst it's customers, the 60% lower cost compared to it's bigger competitors makes it a steal even at it's current lofty valuations

BTU - Peabody is well positioned for the next 10-20 years as coal goes 'mainstream' and becomes more environmentally friendly. Coal recently spun off it's east coast USA operations (Patriot Coal - PCX) so that it can focus on it's major expansion of it's Illinois Basin operations and it's western business. More importantly, it spun off Patriot to focus on the emerging technologies surrounding coal (CTL - Coal to Liquids/ Coal Cleaning/ etc). From my perspective, coal's reputation as a major pollutant doesn't mean bad things for Peabody.....it just means they need to find ways to make more money by being more eco-friendly. They have invested largely in the Pan Asian market, and stand to do very well considering that 3% of the world's electricity is delivered by Peabody.

LDK - I write extensively on LDK, and am intrigued by the solar boom. LDK is a stock I will talk a lot about on this blog over the next few weeks, so for now, I can tell you they are a leading manufacturer of polysilicon solar wafers which are the primary component for solar energy generation.

AUY - Yamana gold is in my portfolio but has been underperforming since they acquired Meridian (went from $15 to $9 before recovering to the current $13 level). I believe the run on Gold is not over and that Yamana is well positioned to explode profits over the next 2-3 years given their strong management, and politically friendly mine locations. Spot prices at $1000 mean $20 for AUY.

DNDN - My mind invests in the above companies, but my heart is with Dendreon. Their prostate cancer drug candidate, Provenge, has been quite a story in 2007. The drug was recommended by an FDA panel (17-0 on safety, 13-4 on efficacy), but was later given an 'approvable' letter from the FDA. Corruption exists, which I will talk about, and congress is getting involved. I believe that Provenge will be approved in 2009 and the stock will be in the $20 level.

SOMX - Somaxon is one I am not sure of at this point, but it's on my radar. Their drug candidate, Silenor, is looking very good for FDA approval in the insomnia space, and they file their NDA (new drug appplication) with the FDA in Q1 '08. The NDA was supposed to be filed in mid '07, but the FDA requested a toxicity trial which is underway. The recent 'approvable' of competitor Neurocrine Biosciences (NBIX) insomnia drug was largely unexpected, so this one is no sure thing as the FDA is becoming more difficult to understand then any girlfriend I've ever had. Add to the fact that SOMX has been unsuccessful in finding a pharma partner and their CEO recently resigned, and you have a lot of negativity surrounding this one. Due to all of these things, their stock price has been battered down from $15 to $5 and it can't get much worse for SOMX unless they get flat out rejected by the FDA next year.

CEGE - Another prostate cancer drug company that develops GVAX. Similar to DNDN, they are in the exciting, yet unproven, immunotherapy space. While their current Phase 3 trial is not slated to be finished by 2010, and I currently have no position in CEGE, they are part of the landscape that I am interested in.

There are more....many many more, but this is an introductory post that consists of the stocks that interest me for the moment.

All the best,
RSB