It looks like someone made a rather large bet that U.S. Steel (NYSE: X) was going to take another big leg down after reviewing options trading.

It seems that Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) may be back doing some light options activity in Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI).

Northfield Laboratories Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLD) is just about to go bye-bye.  Even the Chairman sold his last shares.

On the Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) buyout of Wind River Systems (NASDAQ: WIND), it seems some are already looking for a way to make Intel pay more.

Doug has a pretty worthy take here on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and the challenges faced upon the return of Steve Jobs.  But what is interesting is that Apple stock closed up only 0.65% at $144.67 on the news.  Maybe a 60%-plus run since the Jobs news discounts Steve Jobs.

Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) was right.  Its Pre smartphone was a hit as the stores sold out of this rather fast, but shipments were very small.  Now, the question is if a SELL THE NEWS mentality takes hold since shares have run-up so much.

The swine flu, or H1N1, still has trades tied to it, despite this being a late season and pre-summer outbreak that came with a much smaller toll and weaker move than the plain Jane flu.  A company called Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX) signed a cooperation agreement to NIH to agree to evaluate a virus-like particle vaccine candidate against the H1N1 virus, and the company said it has completed initial steps towards producing an H1N1 VLP vaccine for animal and human testing.  This created a move well north of 50% as the stock rallied from $1.87 to $3.26 on Thursday, but then on Friday it gave back almost half of those gains and shares closed down at $2.60 for the week.

Unless there are several guidance surprises coming, there are very few key earnings due out this coming week that are likely to guide the markets on their own.

-The 24/7 Wall Street Team

You can read that full report here at the BioHealthInvestor.com website.

Jon C. Ogg
May 13, 2009

Many of the recent biotech implosions are always interesting to see if short sellers are getting out of the way or adding pressure.  Out of the biotechs we covered with recent implosions here is what we saw from May to June.  Oddly enough, only Dendreon (DNDN) out of this group showed a drop in the short interest out of this group from May to June..

Dendreon (DNDN)…can’t forget them. Recently we noted how options were weighing on the stock and how the company probably had a news vacuum coming up.
June Short Interest: 40.8 million shares, down almost 2% from May.
May Short Interest: 41.66M.

Adolor Corp. (ADLR)
June Short Interest: 6.5 million shares, up almost 10% from May.
May Short Interest: 5.9 million shares.

Allos Therapeutics (ALTH) didn’t implode, but it looked like it was going to.  Short sellers didn’t have the news ahead of time so maybe the short-covering was a savior.
June Short Interest: 5.17 million shares, up 30% from May.
May Short Interest: 3.97 million shares.

Northfield Labs (NFLD)….going, going, gone…..Biotech Zombie.
June Short Interest: 8.06 million shares, up 8% from May.
May Short Interest:  7.4 million shares.

Nastech Pharma (NSTK) was Cramer’s biotech zombie he said was looking up back in March. Short sellers bet against Cramer.
June Short Interest: 5.09 million shares, up 21% from May.
May Short Interest: 4.2 million shares.

Coley Pahrmaceuticals (COLY)….short sellers didn’t know this was getting the bad news at the cut-off date.
June Short Interest: 4.7 million shares, up 5% from May.
May Short Interest: 4.46 million shares.

Cell Genesys (CEGE)
June Short Interest: 15.4 million shares, up almost under 10% from May.
May Short Interest: 14 million shares.

Nuvelo Inc. (NUVO)…short sellers didn’t know for sure that Bayer was bailing here…..
June Short Interest: 8.06 million shares, up 8% from May.
May Short Interest: 7.44 million shares.

The Biotech HOLDRs (BBH) are hard to draw an inference to because of the size differentials and volume, but its June short interest was up more than 4% from May with a reading of 1.72 million shares.

Jon C. Ogg
June 27, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

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 jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

The short interest is on the rise overall, but the odd thing is that the short interest in biotech shares is really a mixed bag.  Some of the short interest indications doesn’t really look like the short sellers were making the right moves, but time will be the true judge.  Here are the key NASDAQ biotech short interest numbers:
 
Stock (Ticker                MAY        APRIL    CHANGE
Amgen (AMGN)         25.59M    27.99M    -8.5%
Gilead (GILD)            12.99M    13.57M    -4.2%
Celgene (CELG)        25.9M    24.6M         5%
Genzyme (GENZ)        7.05M    6.75M       4.5%
Medimmune (MEDI)    20.5M    17.2M       18.8%
Biogen-Idec (BIIB)       9.61M    9.09M        5.7%
Amylin Pharma (AMLN) 18.7M  20.0M      -6.4%
Imclone (IMCL)             6.26M    7.89M      -20.6%
Dendreon (DNDN)       41.6M    33.9M       22.9%
Northfield (NFLD)         6.24M    6.62M       -5.7%

Jon C. Ogg
May 25, 2007

The truth is that this may not be a true biotech because they have been working on more of a hemoglobin-based blood substitute called PolyHeme, but they literally have every other characteristic of a biotech zombie.

They would have been a one hit wonder that if their blood substitute would have worked then the sky could have been the limit.  If this would have worked the company would have likely been acquired by a larger player at some point, but the risks and time to test this made it cheaper to let someone else fail or buy after the leg work had been done.

Imagine every ambulance in the world being equipped with their artificial blood for trauma and wound injuries.  Imagine every military-based medical facility having this.  The company has been public and based solely on hope and promise for more than 10 years and at some points has traded well over $20.00 per share on test awards and on positive data.  After the news came out on Northfield’s phase II’s yesterday, that all went out the window.

The death warrant was originally offered up back in December when its actual test group had lower survival rates than the saline solution group.  Ouch.  Yesterday was probably the end of its last hopes.  The company can keep testing and can keep claiming whatever it wants, but the equity trade is probably done.  Any positive data down the road will be met with major questions and about all that the investing public can hope is that the company can find a suitable "replacement target" that it can purchase outright or purchase the rights to.

The company has been burning though more than $5 million per quarter and ended the February 28 quarter $47 million in cash and equivalents.  With shares down another 20% after being crushed yesterday the market cap is down to $40 million, close to its net tangible book value.  That is of course before the investor law suits try to suck that money dry.  Sorry to say it, particularly in light that some of the trauma test patients didn’t make it, but the new company name may be NorthfieldZombieLabs.Org.

Jon C. Ogg
May 24, 2007

Jon C. Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

The company’s stock is trading down 40% pre-market after releasing that its Phase III studies failed to meet endpoints and failed to show any statistically significance.  A prior result before this latest release even showed some progress that was interpreted as worse than the observation group.  It just looks like the fake blood product from this company is not going to come to fruition.

As of its last balance sheet reading it carried $47 million cash and equivalents and had less than $5 million in total liabilities.  Its implied market cap after this huge 40% beheading today will put it close to $66 million in market cap.  This has been a huge cash burn and before the negative results started coming out in Phase III and Phase III’s this traded higher than $17.00 over the last 52-weeks.  We noted that the implosion here back in December was the equivalent of ‘bleeding to death on fake blood.’

A small bio-medical developer named Biopure Corporation (BPUR-NASDAQ)  is trading up 8% in the Northfield Labs’ product failure.  Biopure is working on a blood oxygenation treatment supplement mainly used in anemia but could have some of the same applications.

Jon C. Ogg
May 23, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.