Over the last couple of years, more than half of all companies that went public came through the back door via mergers with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). We all know how that has turned out – pretty much what we warned about several years ago in a piece titled How SPACs Reward Everyone Except […]
Getting life insurance is one of those things that responsible adults are supposed to do, like work the same job for 45 years and retire with a gold watch. Who does that anymore? Similarly, the number of people buying into life insurance policies is dropping. Over the last decade, life insurance market penetration decreased by […]
Oftentimes, we’ll come across a promising investment thesis that’s sailed through most of its life without accomplishing much. (Graphene anyone?) While some investors bet on carbon-based nanomaterials transforming the entire materials industry, others looked to new engine designs that might disrupt the automotive industry. We’ve covered at least half a dozen companies trying to reinvent […]
Fear of missing out, FOMO, is the bane of every newbie investor who sees rapid short-term price appreciation as a good thing. When a stock doubles in a single trading session, that’s the type of volatility risk-averse investors try to avoid. It’s precisely why we don’t invest in drug developers – life sciences companies with […]
What attracts many new investors to the stock market is a really exciting story which involves the promise of future riches. Outside of pharmaceutical stocks, you rarely find companies worth billions without meaningful revenues. We say “meaningful” because sometimes a company will generate small amounts of revenues forever without actually doing squat. That’s why we […]
We’ve talked before about the many types of regenerative medicines under development by a multitude of companies. Investors are pouring money into a burgeoning field of life sciences called longevity of which regenerative medicine is a part of. From printing organs on demand to harvesting them from pigs, there are many promising regenerative medicine technologies […]
Longevity is potentially a trillion-dollar industry – until it isn’t, because we can’t keep the vulnerable safe from the latest pandemic. The Woohoo Flu has us distracted from the longevity thesis for a bit as the medical community scrambles to deal with something we can’t control. A lack of information and a fractured population means […]
History is full of little ironies, like the fact that ZZ Top band member Frank Beard was the guy without a hillbilly beard or that the owner of Segway died by riding a Segway off a cliff. Another little twist is that the modern-day concept of young blood transfusions – siphoning blood off from the […]
The desire to extend lifespan is as old as human civilization. The concept of an “elixir of life” that could confer immortality appeared in the Indian Vedas before 1000 BCE (and perhaps much earlier), and the search for it consumed alchemists for centuries, from ancient China and India to Medieval Europe. Unfortunately, many of the […]
In the past, we’ve discussed a number of startup 3D bioprinting companies that are looking to create human tissues using 3D bioprinting, though all are in the early stages of development. The only publicly traded company involved solely in 3D bioprinting, Organovo (ONVO), has seen their share price fall over -40% year-to-date even though they announced last week […]