What happened today with Schering-Plough (SGP) is exactly why I have never bought a pharmaceutical stock and don’t plan to. I’ve always had this belief that every pharma company was one FDA study away from a 20% drop or worse and I had been meaning to write a blog post about this for a while. Of course on the flip side you could say with these stocks they always have a pop in them if they get approved for a new drug but the drug approval process creates so much volatility in these stocks as the FDA takes a very long time and creates many news stories causing lots of pops and drops on rumors of approval or FDA wanting more information.

You are kidnapped and dropped off in one of these stores with all name brands removed. Can you tell which one you are in? I believe all of these stores are too similar and would never invest in any of them for that reason and also there are just wayyyyy to many of them. If I see a CVS next to a duane reede, my only incentive to goto one over the other is which one is physically closer to me at the given moment.

…Most over used 2 words in newspapers this year. Searching google news for “credit woes” in the last day(Feb 29th 2008) produces 914 hits. Everyday the market is down I see the same couple of words in financial headlines over and over again. When the market is down we have a mix of the following words…. Investors, Credit Concerns/Woes, Fear, Inflation, Worries, Economic, Fall, Drop, Housing, Outlook, Profit Taking, Dollar Weakening, Write-offs, Pullback.

If you trade a stock on insider knowledge and you lose money, do you get your money back when the SEC prosecutes you?

In June of last year, PENN National Gaming Inc. (PENN) agreed to be acquired by a group of investors led by Fortress Investment Group (FIG) for $67 in cash for each share of the stock. At the time of the buyout announcement this was a 31% premium over the previous days stock close at $51.14. Right after the merger was announced the stock shortly dropped for 7 straight trading days. Normally after a buyout announcement stocks trade pretty close to their buyout price, say within 5% of the actual buyout offer.