Congratulations to all of our contributors for their diligence and perseverance in finding winning stocks, and kudos to John McCamant of Medical Technology Stock Letter whose Top 2015 Pick led the way, with gains of 60.54%!
Wall Street’s Best Investments Top Picks 2015
Three of the four Top Picks of 2015 were high-growth biotech/technology companies, and the fourth was a bet that gold prices were not coming back anytime soon.
Here’s what our contributors had to say at the time they recommended their winners:
“Five Prime (FPRX) is a classic early-stage platform company with a proprietary and powerful technology based on the company’s broad experience and unique understanding of proteins. FPRX is focusing its internal research in the red hot sector of immune-oncology (I/O).
In our view, FPRX and its cutting edge protein library puts it in the proverbial “cat bird seat” when it comes to identifying new targets and protein drugs in I/O.
Five Prime recently announced an excellent partnership with Bristol-Myers which will test BMS’ Opdivo (nivolumab), PD-1 (programed death-1) immune checkpoint inhibitor, with FPA008, Five Prime’s monoclonal antibody that inhibits colony stimulating factor-1 receptor (CSF1R).
In our view, FPRX has all the ingredients to become a biotech winner and is poised to become a major player in I/O, quite possibly the hottest and most exciting space for biotech investors today. FPRX is a BUY under 27 with a target price of 40.”
“Incyte’s (INCY) Jakafi was launched in myelofibrosis (MF), as a treatment for a rare bone marrow cancer during 2011. Third quarter 2014 sales were up 63% year/year and annualize to $391 million. Incyte estimated a $500 million goal for MF, which appears to be too low for the existing myelofibrosis patients (~10,000). Recently, Jakafi was approved for the use in polycythemia vera (PV) patients, a blood cancer that either cannot tolerate or have failed to respond to hydroxyurea.
Jakafi’s MF and PV opportunities provide a growing base business that funds Incyte’s extensive pipeline, and success in any of these programs would likely open potential lucrative markets. Therefore, Incyte’s shares are expected to outperform with a target price of $81.”
“One can take advantage of the further drop in gold by buying the 1x inverse ETF, PowerShares DB Gold Short ETN (DGZ) or the 2x inverse ETF, ProShares UltraShort Gold (GLL).” WSBI Editor’s note: DGZ gained 20.34% for the year.
“Social networking giant Facebook (FB) has put up solid growth numbers, with sales rising 63% in the past four quarters to $11.2 billion and earnings surging 161% to 1.07 per share. The stock has been a standout as well since it broke out on big volume in the 30s in July 2013. It recently made fresh new highs above $80.
It’s interesting to note that this is the second consecutive year that Facebook has been one of our leading recommendations. In 2014, the stock was a favorite of Joseph Cotton, of Cotton’s Technically Speaking, returning more than 30% to subscribers who purchased it at the beginning of that year.
The majority of these winners were companies with quickly growing revenues and unique products—both excellent indicators of future value. And the contrarian bet on gold also proved prescient, showing that going against the crowd can often pay off.
Looking forward to this year’s picks, I think you’ll find that our contributors have found a nice variety of stocks for what is stacking up to be another volatile market—a year when strategic stock-picking will once again, beat the averages.”
