You got another chance for JUNO

Juno has been going through a roller coaster in the past week to say the least: got crashed overnight by 30%, rebounded close to 30% within a week and then got sold off again as of now. Sure there are a lot of nervousness out there and for those who got it at a higher price were eager to sell when it bounced back and those who got in at crash wanted to lock in the profit. Very understandable and typical behaviors from the speculators.  You cannot blame them! For me, I’m certainly among those for long term and the short term gyration of the prices are only creating more opportunities for accumulating more shares. I happened to see some interesting comments from the Barclays analyst,  Jonathan Eckard:  “We are not aware of clinical hold ever being lifted in less than one week, especially when there are patient deaths involved,”  “We believe this reflects both the FDA's familiarity and view of CAR-T therapies and the dire need of the patients these products are being tested in." Eckard added “this could be considerable when looking forward to the product’s review process, while we still see many boxes that will need to be checked before ultimate approval.” Is he stealing my thoughts?

Here is another report on the news: The FDA’s prompt, go-ahead action suggests that the agency isn’t particularly concerned that this could be a safety issue beyond the combo with fludarabine. The trial will continue, as it was previously, with a preconditioning regimen consisting solely of another chemotherapy drug, cyclophosphamide.

 As with any new technologies, you can bet there are a lot of doubts and naysayers out there about the validity and their longevity. But just remember, great opportunities are always born with doubts and disbelief. If everything is well established, you think you can get a good price anymore? I guess everyone would agree Apple is a great company now but how many of you know Apple has gone through turmoil 7 times close to bankruptcy? Big money is not made when iPhone/iPad became popular products but when Steve Jobs was kicked out from Apple years ago. That’s how a great opportunity was created with a frightening crisis. So investment, especially speculative investment is not looking for certainty but for a reasonable possibility of success. I’m convinced we have one for Juno. If it were not, you would not have seen Celgene spending billions for a deal with Juno. Now GE is also coming on board to build a $1 billion business offering vital manufacturing tools for a coming wave of cell therapies. Why so? Because they estimate sales of cell therapies will reach $10 billion by 2020 and $30 billion by 2030!

Having said that and regardless how much I believe in CAR-T, it is still a speculation with substantial risk. As such, I don’t want to simply buy and hold but structure my positions in such a way that my downside risk is minimized, in case I’m totally wrong. As I said, I bought stocks outright after hours when it tanked 30% and I bought call options the next day when it continued to slid down. So I took the opportunity to sell my stocks with good profit when it jumped high on Wed and in turn I used my profit to buy more calls as free long-term positions. For my calls, I partially sold covered calls to minimize my risk but it won’t totally cap my potential gains. Considering this won’t be a smooth journey but likely a very bumpy road, one may also consider to set up a straddle by buying calls and puts at the same time. If you consider this strategy, it is important to go for the long-term calls/puts. With sufficient time, I think Juno calls may likely gain several times from your initial invested money. This is what I’m looking for!