Markets Swing ‘Out of The Rough’ On Monday – $FATE $INMB $INVO $MRNA $PFE $TSLA $ZYNG Rise!

 

 

In the early going on Monday investors seemed to have pushed the “SELL, SELL, SELL” button like our good old friend Jim Cramer likes to shout on his CNBC show Mad Money. Indeed all indices dropped precipitously out the gate, but then after about an hour and a half, investors began hitting the “BUY BUY BUY” button & all indices moved upward into the close. Mind you, 8 of the 11 sectors remained in the red at the end of the day as the S&P 500 still closed lower at 4,696.05 (-.10%), the Dow 30 closed at 36,068.87 (-.45%), & the small caps on the Russell 2000 closed at 2,171.15 (-.40%). However, the Nasdaq managed to make its way back into the green & out the deep sandpit that it had began the day in to close at 14,942.83 (+.05%). The industrials sector down 1.2% & the materials sector down 1% led the decline. Unfortunately, the MicroCaps also closed lower with the iShares Micro-Cap ETF (IWC) closing at $135.46, -.79%,  however it had dipped even lower to $133.48 when bids were broadly hard to come by in the tiny ones. I believe that today’s trading action and associated volatility may what we may have in store for us in the markets for some time… so buckle up!

 

All things biotech also got hit early again today as the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI), a barometer of the smaller biotech stocks,  established a new 52-week low at $100.05 before recovering to close the day at $103.14, +.15%. The 52-wk range is $100.05 – $174.79. It was nice to see the recovery on the first day of 40TH Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that is unfortunately being held in virtual format again because of the Omicron leaving the once bustling streets of San Francisco, where it has been held since the beginning, somewhat clearer to navigate this week. The healthcare sector also closed up 1% as Pfizer (PFE, $56.24, +.9%) confirmed that their COVID-19 Omicron carnet vaccine will be ready for prime time in March. Shares of Moderna (MRNA) also did their part as they closed at $233.70, +9.28% after announcing recent updates on its industry-leading mRNA pipeline including highlighting that 807 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine shipped globally in 2021; approximately 25% of those doses shipped to low- and middle-income countries, Product sales for 2021 approximately $17.5 billion (unaudited), Increasing APAs for 2022 delivery to approximately $18.5 billion and approximately $3.5 billion in options, Announced a new collaboration with Carisma Therapeutics (private) for in vivo chimeric antigen receptor monocyte (CAR-M) therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, including solid tumors, & the MRNA continues to scale with 40 programs in development, including 23 in ongoing clinical studies.

 

Only one macroeconomic report surfaced today as the Wholesale Inventories report confirmed a 1.4% increase M/M.

 

West Virginia Senator Manchin was widely reported to be no longer involved in talks & no longer interested in passing the Build Back Better Act. He has also retracted the $1.8T counteroffer that he made a 4-weeks ago possibly further tightening the liquidity strings of capitol hill. 

 

The yield curve also rose again as 2-yr yield moved up 3 basis points to .90% & the 10-yr yield moved up 1 basis point at 1.77%. 

 

The U.S. Dollar Index ticked up .3% to 95.97, gold prices closed at $1,802/oz., +$5/oz., silver closed at $22.48, +$.11, Bitcoin (BTC) closed at $41,882.57, -.41% over the past 24-hours & oil prices ticked up another .25% to close at $79.10/bbl. 

 

 

 

Join me tomorrow as I will host our sister organization’s next Tribe Public Complimentary Webinar Presentation and Q&A Event that will be held Tuesday, January 11, 2022 (8 am PT/ 11 am ET). Our events are approximately 30 minutes in duration. Nauticus Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Nicolaus Radford & Eli Spiro, CEO of CleanTech Acquisition Corp will co-host a presentation and Q&A event titled “From Space to sea – Tesla of the Subsurface”. They will be available for a 5-10 minute Q&A session at the end of the presentation. You may register at CLAQ.TribePublic.com. The event will speak, in part, to the overall oceanic economy, which counting both the seas and the shores, amounts to $2.5 trillion per year. Did you know that if the ocean were a country, it would have the seventh-largest GDP on Earth? That number could continue to grow — but only if our planet’s many seas remain in good health. We will also learn about Nauticus Robotics & their world-class team that is composed of ex-NASA engineers that develop revolutionary cloud-based autonomy software to enable a smarter and more sustainable ocean industry using its fleet of autonomous robots from the surface to the seabed. These robots are enabled by the Nauticus Software Suite, a platform of AI/ML technologies designed to disrupt the legacy methods in the marine industry. Its first product offering, Aquanaut, is the world’s first tetherless underwater robot capable of robust decision making for both long distance ocean data collection and close-in dexterous manipulation of the subsea environment, supporting government & defense and other commercial industry sectors. Nauticus’ software, robots, and services provide customers the necessary data collection, analytics, and subsea manipulation capabilities to support and maintain assets, while significantly reducing their operational and carbon footprints to improve offshore health, safety, and environmental exposure. 

 

Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO, $142.99, -13.13%) and Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA, $8.44, +40.67%), two leaders in interactive and mobile entertainment, today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement, under which Take-Two will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Zynga in a cash and stock transaction valued at $9.86¹ per Zynga share, based on the market close as of January 7, 2022, with a total enterprise value of approximately $12.7 billion. Under the terms and subject to the conditions of the agreement, Zynga stockholders will receive $3.50 in cash and $6.36 in shares of Take-Two common stock for each share of Zynga common stock outstanding at the closing of the transaction. The purchase price represents a premium of 64% to Zynga’s closing share price on January 7, 2022.

 

 

 

Apple (AAPL) closed at $172.19, +.01%. Did you know that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook saw his compensation package jump +6 times year over year swelling to $98.7 million in 2021?

 

Tesla (TSLA) closed at $1,058.12, +3.03%.  Today, Bloomberg reported that Tesla has agreed to purchase nickel supplies from miner Talon Metals Corp. as an expected surge in demand spurs automakers to secure access to battery metals and other electric-car parts.On January 2, Tesla reported that they achieved production of more than 305,000 vehicles and deliveries of over 308,000 vehicles in Q4 & that in 2021, they delivered over 936,000 vehicles, thus beating expectations.  

 

The Walt Disney Company (DIS) closed at $156.60, -.78%.  Disney will hold its annual meeting of shareholders on Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 1:00 p.m. ET / 10:00 a.m. PT by virtual meeting and will be made available via webcast at www.disney.com/investors.

 

 

On the small side, Atossa Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ATOS), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company seeking to develop innovative proprietary medicines in oncology and infectious disease with a current focus on breast cancer and COVID-19, rose to an intraday high of $1.52 prior to closing at $1.50, -1.96% on 2.002M shares of trading volume. On Dec. 22, Atossa announced that it has initiated enrollment of its Phase 2 clinical study of oral Z-Endoxifen in Sweden. Participants in the study will be premenopausal women with elevated mammographic breast density, which is an emerging public health issue affecting more than 10 million women in the United States and many more worldwide. “This is an extremely important milestone as it marks the next phase of developing our proprietary Z-Endoxifen,” said Steven Quay, M.D., Ph.D., Atossa’s Chairman and CEO. “This study will help determine the relationship between daily doses of Endoxifen and reduction in breast density and will help us further assess safety and tolerability. We look forward to providing progress updates as they become available.” Physician-Scientist and CEO of Atossa, Steven Quay, MD, PhD, recently published an e-print on his research into a new coronavirus, named BANAL-236, reported by the Institut Pasteur in September 2021. At the time, BANAL-236 was the first bat coronavirus with high homology to SARS-CoV-2 that could directly infect human cells using the same receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses. The new research reports that BANAL-236 has evolved the ability to infect human cells by an unknown mechanism that violates over 40 years of coronavirus research. The COVID-19 e-print is available here and has also been submitted to Nature. “When I read the paper from the Institut Pasteur and looked at the virus, I immediately assumed there was an error in either the way the sequence was assembled or a mix up in the lab with another virus to explain the infectivity,” Quay said. “I contacted the Institut Pasteur with my findings and was deeply disturbed to learn that there was not, in fact, some simple mistake had occurred to explain things. I now knew we were in uncharted waters with a virus that is missing eight key elements that have been shown, over 40 years of research, to be required for growth.” Atossa management also recently presented at  “A Town Hall Q&A Event With Atossa Therapeutics Management Team” with Tribe Public. You can view it clicking here. Atossa also announced recently that it had completed a pre-investigational new drug (PIND) meeting with the FDA to obtain input from the FDA on pre-clinical, clinical, manufacturing and regulatory matters in the U.S. for Atossa’s proprietary Z-endoxifen to treat breast cancer in the neoadjuvant (prior to surgery) setting.

 

Today, Fate Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: FATE), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of programmed cellular immunotherapies for patients with cancer, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the Company’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for FT536, an off-the-shelf, multiplexed-engineered, iPSC-derived, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) NK cell product candidate. FT536 is derived from a clonal master induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line engineered with four functional elements, including a novel CAR that uniquely targets the α3 domain of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I related proteins A (MICA) and B (MICB). MICA and MICB are stress proteins that are expressed at high levels on many solid tumors. The Company plans to initiate clinical investigation of FT536 as a monotherapy and in combination with tumor-targeting monoclonal antibody therapy for the treatment of multiple solid tumor indications. Shares of FATE closed at $49.31, +2.07%. 

 

 

InMed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: INM), a leader in the development, manufacturing and commercialization of rare cannabinoids, closed at $1.22, -4.69% after hitting an intraday high of $1.2606. On Jan. 6, InMed’s CEO Eric A. Adams, Shane Johnson, SVP and General Manager of BayMedica and Chris Meiering, VP of Commercial Operations, presented at Tribe Public’s Webinar Presentation and Q&A Event titled “Addressing The Increasing Demand For Rare Cannabinoids.” On Jan. 5th, InMed issued the following letter from President and CEO Eric A. Adams. Click here to read the letter. 

 

INmune Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ: INMB), a clinical-stage immunology company focused on developing treatments that harness the patient’s innate immune system to fight disease, recently presented data at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium showing mucin 4 (MUC4) expression predicts worse survival and is a treatment resistance factor in women with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). INB03, a DN-TNF therapy, can reverse TNBC treatment resistance by decreasing expression of MUC4 and reducing immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment (TME) by increasing anti-tumor macrophage phagocytosis and increasing lymphocyte function in the TME. The poster will be presented by Dr. Roxana Schillaci, Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental, Buenos Aires, on December 10th. RJ. Tesi, M.D, Chief Executive Officer of INmune Bio, commented, “We are excited to have Dr. Schillaci present these data that expand on her previous findings on the role of MUC4 expression which predicts worse survival and resistance to therapy in HER2+ breast cancer therapy. Now, in both TNBC and HER2+ breast cancer, MUC4 predicts resistance to immunotherapy and an immunosuppressive TME that can be overcome with INB03.” Treatment with INB03 in murine models of breast cancer improves macrophage anti-tumor phagocytic activity, lymphocyte infiltration and function suggesting improved response to combination therapies of INB03 with inmunotherapy. Shares of INMB closed trading today at $9.21, +2.45% after hitting an intraday high of $9.22.

 

Shares of INVO Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ: INVO), a medical device company focused on commercializing the world’s only in vivo culture system (IVC), INVOcell®, closed at $3.56, after hitting $3.68 during intraday trading, but still well off of its 52-wk high of $12.30. A sell side analyst named Kyle Bauser, Ph.D. at Colliers Securities recently published his Buy Rating Report with a $6 Price Target. On Dec. 16, INVO Bioscience, Inc. announced that it has entered into an expanded agreement with Ovoclinic, a group of clinics specialized in assisted reproductive treatments with four locations across Spain (Madrid, Marbella, Málaga, Ceuta) and collaborating centers around Europe, to accelerate adoption of INVOcell within their markets. The agreement includes the expanded adoption of INVOcell within Ovoclinic locations as well as establishing an INVO Center of Excellence for future training for the European Market. Cristina Gonzalez, embryologist and Quality Manager of Ovoclinic laboratories stated, “After several successful trials implementing the exciting INVOcell fertility treatment, Ovoclinic aims to provide its patients with this effective alternative to the processes used so far in Spain in the field of reproductive medicine. We consider INVOcell to be an effective method of natural reproduction that involves the future mother at the very first moment of the process. We are confident that this innovative treatment will help many patients to choose this new alternative solution to achieve their dream of forming a family by actively participating in the reproductive process.” According to the World Bank, Spain, with total population of approximately 47 million people, has one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe, affecting approximately 15% of the population, or one in seven couples of reproductive ages. According to reports, in 2010, there were approximately one million couples requesting assisted reproductive treatment, however only 22% received one or more assisted reproductive treatment cycles. The average waiting time for an IUI or IVF cycle in a public health facility was 339 days. Ovoclinic reports that they maintain the best technical and human resources to deal with all kinds of infertility problems along with the simplest and most natural treatments to the most complex and advanced techniques pioneered in Spain. Ovoclinic also works in partnership with Ovobank, the first European Donor Egg Bank in Europe.

 

Shares of Hecla Mining Company (NYSE: HL), the largest silver producer in the United States closed at $4.92, +1.03%.

 

Shares of NeuBase Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NBSE),  a biotechnology platform company Drugging the Genome™ to address disease at the base level using a new class of precision genetic medicines, closed at $2.52, -2.33% after hitting an intraday high of $2.60. The 52-wk range is $2.30-$12.89. Today, after the close, NeuBase announced  the appointment of Todd P. Branning as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Mr. Branning has more than 25 years of experience leading corporate finance and accounting, tax, financial planning and analysis, and investor relations for several publicly traded pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining NeuBase, Mr. Branning was CFO of Phathom Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly traded late clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. Before that, he was Senior Vice President, CFO of Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, where he helped to build, leverage, and optimize infrastructure following the completion of a transformational merger. Prior to joining Amneal, he was Senior Vice President, CFO of the global generic medicines division at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., a multinational generic pharmaceuticals company, where he led the finance function and served on the leadership team responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of Teva’s largest multi-billion-dollar commercial unit. Mr. Branning has also held financial leadership roles at Allergan plc, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, PPG Industries, Inc., and Merck & Co., Inc. Mr. Branning received his BBA from the University of Miami and MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Branning is also a Certified Public Accountant and has completed a CFO certification program at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. On Jan. 5, Neubase announced the appointment of Eric J. Ende, M.D., to the Company’s Board of Directors. Dr. Ende has nearly 25 years of experience in advising biotechnology and life sciences companies to optimize corporate strategy and structure and maximize shareholder value. “Dr. Ende has the experience and perspective to recognize the opportunity ahead for NeuBase as it plans for the clinical development of its potentially transformational new class of precision genetic medicines,” said Dietrich A. Stephan, Ph.D., Founder, CEO and Chairman of NeuBase. “We welcome Dr. Ende’s strategic insight as we begin to scale our therapeutic candidate pipeline from our new precision genetic medicines platform technology. In addition to his broad experience, he also shares in our Company’s goal of helping millions of patients with both common and rare conditions that currently have limited or no treatment options.” “I believe NeuBase has a game-changing technology that overcomes the limitations of early precision genetic medicines by delivering mutation selectivity, repeat dosing, and systemic administration in a modular precision medicine platform with the potential to efficiently scale to treat a wide variety of diseases that are currently undruggable,” said Dr. Ende. “I look forward to working closely with NeuBase’s leadership team and Board of Directors to elevate strategy and operations in order to create exceptional value for patients and shareholders.” Dr. Ende currently is the President of Ende BioMedical Consulting Group. He also is a member of the Board of Directors of Matinas BioPharma, where he is the Chairman of the Compensation Committee and serves on the Audit and the Nomination & Governance Committees, and of Avadel plc, where he is the Chairman of the Nomination & Corporate Governance Committee and serves on the Audit and Compensation Committees. Dr. Ende previously served on the Board of Directors of Progenics (acquired by Lantheus Holdings) and Genzyme (acquired by Sanofi-Aventis for $20 billion). During his time on Genzyme’s Board of Directors, Dr. Ende was a member of the Audit and Risk Management Committees. Prior to Genzyme, Dr. Ende was a biotechnology analyst, previously serving at Merrill Lynch, BofA Securities, and Lehman Brothers. Dr. Ende received an M.B.A. from NYU Stern School of Business, an M.D. from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a B.S. in biology and psychology from Emory University.