Go to content Go to navigation Go to search

Navigenics: A Good Investment In Your Future?

April 11th, 2008 by tommy

Is investing into cutting edge genetic companies a good long term investing play? Or is the reality of companies making REAL profits in this sector so far off, that it is not worth the opportunity cost of capital at this junction in time?

Earlier this week I was able to attend an opening event in New York for a genetic testing company called Navigenics: a new company startup out of The Valley funded by none other than by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers. The crux of the business is offering insight into your health future via genetic testing. The bet is that there’s enough of a market out there right now to cough up $1500 and a dollop of saliva in order to determine their genetic risk profile for diseases. It seems the technology is there: and certainly, with our ever widening gap between have and haven’t, there will be enough people with disposable income to pay for a glance into the genetic crystal ball that is DNA testing.

I would imagine this product is a marketers dream… you could go a million directions positioning this product. Certainly the logical direction, which the company’s website indicates, is providing people a sense of control in their destiny that is a commercial first of its kind. Parents wanting to ‘be there’ for their kids, and whatnot.

Designer Genes
Obviously, Navigenics is start up, so there’s no investing in this particular venture. Well, not yet at least. But I myself do have some long term capital tied up in Clinical Data (CLDA), which focuses on pharmacogenomics: a big fancy word not in my spell checker which means a process of tailoring drugs to a person’s genetic profile to increase efficacy and mitigate toxicity. Remember the old joke about having ‘Designer Genes’. This would kind of be the Designer Drugs to go in the key pocket of those Designer Genes. Hopefully my DNA will keep me around long enough find out I made a good investment.

-Tommy

Share/Save/Bookmark

Investment Management Definitions

April 7th, 2008 by tommy

Investment Management Definitions

“Asset management” redirects here. For other uses, see Asset management (disambiguation).

Investment management is the professional management of various securities (shares, bonds etc) assets (e.g. real estate), to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of the investors. Investors may be institutions (insurance companies, pension funds, corporations etc.) or private investors (both directly via investment contracts and more commonly via collective investment schemes e.g. mutual funds) .

The term asset management is often used to refer to the investment management of collective investments, whilst the more generic fund management may refer to all forms of institutional investment as well as investment management for private investors. Investment managers who specialize in advisory or discretionary management on behalf of (normally wealthy) private investors may often refer to their services as wealth management or portfolio management often within the context of so-called “private banking”.

The provision of investment management services includes elements of financial analysis, asset selection, stock selection, plan implementation and ongoing monitoring of investments. Investment management is a large and important global industry in its own right responsible for caretaking of trillions of dollars, euro, pounds and yen. Coming under the remit of financial services many of the world’s largest companies are at least in part investment managers and employ millions of staff and create billions in revenue.

Fund manager (or investment advisor in the U.S.) refers to both a firm that provides investment management services and an individual(s) who directs “fund management” decisions.

== Process manager decide what to buy and when? (iii) How does the manager decide what to sell and when? (iv) Who takes the decisions and are they taken by committee? (v) What controls are in place to ensure that a rogue fund (one very different from others and from what is intended) cannot arise?

Share/Save/Bookmark

A Look Back at Investing in 2003

April 4th, 2008 by tommy

continuing to own stocks in the face of the fifth consecutive down week (as of September 27th) in what is shaping up to be the third consecutive down year for the market.
Forgetting about the market for a moment, there is plenty to worry about.The United States may be going to war, terrorist attacks are still fresh on our minds, the economy is still trying to get some traction, and corporate honesty and financial reporting are not inspiring confidence.Why not just hang it up and buy bonds and CDs?
We will get to the answer in a few moments.The only thing that pleases us about the third quarter just past is that it has
ended. For the last full week of the quarter, the Dow fell 3.6%, the S&P was down 2.1%, and the NASDAQ Composite lost
1.8%. It was the fifth straight week that ended in a decline for the averages and capped a miserable quarter. The Dow and
NASDAQ posted their sixth straight monthly loss en route to a third consecutive losing quarter for the NASDAQ and the S&P.
The S&P index is now down 25% for the year, and the NASDAQ is down 40%.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Next Entries »