Speculative Swine Flu Stocks Giving It Back (NVAX, GNBT, BCRX, PURE, VICL, VIVO, AVII)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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This week there have been many crazy stock gains among the speculative biotech sector, and these were tied directly to the ‘speculative stocks’ that could have any ties in reality, fiction, and even imagination to a cure or hope in the fight against Swine Flu or any other sort of flu for that matter.

As you will see below, Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX), Generex Biotechnology Corp. (NASDAQ: GNBT), BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: BCRX), Pure Bioscience (NASDAQ: PURE), Vical Inc (NASDAQ: VICL), Meridian Bioscience Inc. (NASDAQ: VIVO), and AVI BioPharma Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII) have all begun their overbought roll-over.

Novavax, Inc. (NVAX) is down 13% at $2.75; shares were at $0.81 last Thursday and closed at $1.42 last Friday (and hit $3.88 Monday).

Generex Biotechnology Corp. (GNBT) is down 22% at $0.44; shares were at $0.27 last Thursday and closed at $0.34 last Friday (and hit $0.70 yesterday).

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BCRX) is down 18% at $3.41; shares were at $1.75 last Thursday and closed at $2.21 last Friday (hit $4.89 Monday).

Pure Bioscience (PURE) is down 10% at $10.58; shares were at $1.75 last Thursday and closed at $1.85 last Friday (hit $3.19 Monday).

Vical Inc (VICL) is down almost 7% at $2.27; shares were at $2.40 last Thursday and closed at $2.53 last Friday (hit $3.30 Monday).

Meridian Bioscience Inc (VIVO) are flat today at $17.80; shares were at $16.13 last Thursday and closed at $16.24 last Friday (and hit $18 on Monday).

AVI BioPharma Inc. (AVII) is down 10% at $0.878; shares were at $0.74 last Thursday and closed at $0.89 last Friday (and hit $1.29 Monday).

We sent a notice to our newsletter subscribers that these moves have been seen before, and these same moves are usually followed by a move back down that often takes the stocks  lower than where they started.  Some of these shares moved higher on Friday, so we wanted to show how much some of these have run up since last Thursday even with today’s pullback.

We stand by our prediction of earlier this week, despite the seriousness of this issue and despite the unfortunate deaths and illnesses that have been reported as a result.  Swine flu will soon be the brunt of jokes no different than the “Squeal like a pig!” notorious movie line.  The most dangerous things in Mexico remain the crime and violence, and of course Montezuma’s Revenge.

Jon C. Ogg

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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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