(Commentary)

July 10, 2009 (FinancialWire) — Dr. Joe Duarte (http://www.joe-duarte.com) recently noted: Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) rallied on Wednesday, but the rest of the biotech sector, as represented by the Nasdaq Biotech ETF (NYSE: IBB) mostly went nowhere.

Duarte added: Amgen’s osteoporosis drug denosumab worked better than the competition drug to prevent bone fractures in patients where breast cancer has spread to bone, a fairly common path for the disease. And while its shares rallied nicely, the rest of the biotech sector failed to join in the party.

That’s a clear departure from the way the biotech sector moved in its heydays, the 80s and 90s, where one set of good news for one company often led to a sector-wide rally. The fact is that times have changed, as biotech has matured, and lost a good bit of its wonder for investors.

When the human genome was being deciphered the possibilities seemed endless. Yet, a huge dose of reality has set in over the last few years, as treatments and cures, although highly improved have come more slowly than investors had hoped for.

And while that’s no surprise to scientists and physicians, who are used to the slow grind of science, investors have become disillusioned by biotech, regardless of how much money several of the big companies in the sector make.

Now, with health care reform looming, the profit potential for biotech has been threatened, by the potential for generic competition, and by the cost cutting that has already taken place and that surely lies ahead.

Duarte’s conclusion: If you can afford to park money in select biotech stocks, you may have a good one or two day payoff, such as Amgen. Otherwise, it’s a tough sector right now.

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Duarte partners with the Investors Resource Center at Investrend Information (http://www.investrendinformation.com).

Duarte’s IntelligentForecasts.com (http://www.intelligentforecasts.com) provides free news coverage and analysis, and his daily articles and news summaries offer recommendations and analysis for ETFs, and individual stocks in the technology, health and biotechnology, and energy sectors. Duarte has combined expertise in health care, energy, and the effects of politics and global intelligence on the financial markets offer a unique blend of insight and information to thousands of active investors and political and intelligence aficionados around the world on a daily basis.

He is the author of: Futures And Options For Dummies, Successful Energy Sector Investing, Successful Biotech Investing and co-author of After-Hours Trading Made Easy. In early 2001, in Successful Energy Sector Investing, he correctly predicted that Venezuela’s political problems could lead to an energy crisis in the United States. He has also appeared as a weekly guest on Market Mavens Radio and has logged appearances on KNX radio in Los Angeles, Financial Sense.com radio, and Wall Street Radio.

One of CNBC’s original Market Mavens, Dr. Duarte has been writing about the financial markets since 1990. His articles and commentary have been featured on CBS Marketwatch, Barron’s, Smart Money, Medical Economics, and in Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazines. In 2003, Doctor Duarte received second place, in the professional section, of the Medical Economics Investment Challenge with a 12-month return of 42%.

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