On any given day, you can easily find a biotech stock that has jumped 20% or more. Sometimes, these gains even sneak into triple digits.
To understand the power of this rally, look no further than the Biotech iShares ETF (NASDAQ:IBB). This ETF has even dominated the red-hot NASDAQ, tripling its performance over the past four months.
However, the big bull run in biotechs looks like it could be nearing exhaustion.
IBB fell more than 2.6% yesterday as traders began to sell some of the stronger momentum names. And just last Friday, IBB dropped nearly 3%, marking the index’s first significant pullback in weeks.
Momentum indicators and strong downside volume are flashing warning signals here. I suspect a retreat to at least $240 for IBB in the coming weeks.
If you’re looking to limit your risk, you should consider cashing out your biotech gains and avoiding this sector as it becomes more volatile. Remember, these furious rallies are usually met with equally powerful selling. Don’t wait for the breakdown to take your gains. If you do, you might be too late…
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Briefly: In our opinion short speculative positions (half) in silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective. We are closing half of the long-term investment position in gold.
As you know, we had been expecting the tensions in Ukraine to cause a significant rally in gold (not necessarily in the rest of the precious metals sector). Not only wasn’t that the case on Monday – the rally indeed took place, but it was rather average, but gold managed to decline on Tuesday while there was no visible improvement in the situation in Ukraine and on the Crimea peninsula.
Gold is not performing as strongly as it should. That is a major bearish factor. Let’s examine the situation more closely (charts courtesy of http://stockcharts.com.)
The move above the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level was invalidated yesterday. The move lower took place on low volume, which doesn’t confirm the rally. However, that’s not the most important thing to focus on – gold’s performance in light of the most recent events is. As mentioned earlier, it didn’t rally. In fact it’s more or less where it was a week ago. The implications are bearish.
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