Tuesday represented the eighth straight down day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A run of consecutive red days of this length has not been seen since June of 2010 (which ended at seven straight days) and eight straight drops have not happened since the market was completely falling apart in October of 2008.
Investors are always looking to find the niche or the stubborn company that is refusing to yield to the overall market trend based on merits and developments that simply don’t justify a fall in share value. Often times it takes news to bring these developments to light and while the news may not the type that will send a play into orbit, it will be the catalyst that generates attention to a firm and provide the opportunity to showcase its offerings.
Even the biotechnology industry, which typically can find stocks on the run even during the worst of the Dow’s tumbles, has gimped along this last week. Teva (NASDAQ:TEVA) fell again as its MS drug failed in a Phase III study, Merck (NYSE:MRK) lost ground upon yanking its late-stage drug telcagepant (the second failed acute migraine drug attempt for the company) and even smaller drug maker Titan Pharmaceuticals (OTCBB:TTNP) shed some ground with some momentum trying to be built as it heads into Phase III meetings with the Food and Drug Administration later this year.
Sunshine Biopharma Inc. (OTCBB:SBFM), a development stage pharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of drugs for the treatment of various forms of cancer, has been able to buck the trend of many biotechs – and the markets in general – over the last week and more. Since announcing last Monday, July 25th, “that it has completed a study in which the mechanism of clearance of the Company's new drug, Adva-27a, was analyzed using human liver microsomes in vitro…[which] revealed that this compound is cleared by pathways which are independent of Cytochrome P450,” shares have been on the rise. The value of a share of SBFM was 95 cents heading into the Monday morning release and has subsequently climbed to close on Monday at $1.40, representing a 47.37 percent premium to the closing price on July 23, 2011.
Moreover – and wending way to investor acknowledgement of the small drug maker – volume has surged in recent weeks. The initial kick came on July 11th upon news that cytotoxicity studies pitting Adva-27a against Etoposide, a commonly used anti-cancer agent, to measure effectiveness in destroying Multidrug Resistant Breast Cancer (MRBC) cells in vitro. The data produced showed Adva-27a to be 16 times more effective at killing the MRBC cells than Etoposide.
With a float of just over 11 million, liquidity is a double-edged sword as volume tends to stay low, but facilitates rapid movements. The 3-month average trading volume for SBFM has been pulled upward to nearly 14,000 shares based on roughly 700,000 shares trading hands over the last few weeks. Technically speaking, the share price is now holding well over the 50 and 200 day moving averages (registering 62 and 63 cents, respectively), a bullish characteristic followed by even the most mild of all technical traders and a key resistance level of $1.00 has now fallen.
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