Cramer’s Three Biotech Picks, And His Biotech Strategy

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Stock Tickers: DNA, AMGN, NFLD, CELG, GILD, GENZ, ONXX, DNDN

Jim Cramer has a video on TheStreet.com "Wall St. Confidential" showing how the biotech sector can be looked at with blow-ups.  For every small biotech that grown up into a huge company there are 100 Northfield Labs (NFLD).  Cramer thinks you have to play momentum and even stocks like Genentech (DNA) and Amgen (AMGN) have to be gotten out when they are no longer going up.

Cramer still likes Celgene (CELG), Gilead (GILD) and Genzyme (GENZ) in the sectore.  If you bet on one product wonders then have you to be prepared to lose everything.  Onyx Pharma (ONXX) is a potential one-hit wonder that Cramer likes, but says to play it you should buy deep in the money calls because any bad news could chop the stock in half.  He also noted that he believes the FDA is not predictable on upcoming drugs.

From an outsider’s view, it really looks like Cramer has been changing his stance more and more on biotechs.  It is obvious there have been blow-ups like Northfield and there have been fortunes made and lost in Dendreon (DNDN).  Cramer watchers will recall that he rode Amgen (AMGN) down day after day thinking it had bottomed, and stayed positive on Genentech (DNA) as the "winner"  while the stock itself has spent the better part of eighteen months rapidly going nowhere.

Jon C. Ogg
May 29, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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