Investing: Buying Vertex $VRTX for 2021 and hopefully beyond
Posted By RichC on March 25, 2021
For the most part, I’m a conservative investor, although a regular channel trader, and I rarely speculates on risky upstarts, IPOs, zero-profit tech stocks, 
pharmaceutical long-shots or the latest crazy … cryptocurrency trend. Since most “risk” involves speculation, I see it more akin to gambling than eyes-open informed value or growth investing … both which are subject to up’s and down’s in our economy. Do I often wish I had an “all or none” Bitcoin-trader personality? “Yes,” but early investing and living through company bankruptcies, buyouts, margin leverage positions, futures market trades and regular options losses … it taught me the comfort of a good night sleep and a “steady as she goes” slower growing diversified investment 
portfolio. One thing that never seems to be easy, is predicting market sell-offs and gyrations — 1987, 2001, 2008 and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic come to mind. Timing is never easy.
I also recognized there are some established companies that can provide steady income and growth which become more attractively priced on occasion (usually in hindsight). For example, Pfizer $PFE was one of the first out of the gate with a COVID19 vaccine and so I bought in early expecting a little more upside movement on top of a nice quarterly dividend. To my surprise, it didn’t happen … which I’m saying so that you take my next stock mention in the pharmaceutical sector with a proverbial “grain of salt.”
Having watched Vertex Pharmaceuticals $VRTX get hammered last fall when its alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency lung-and-liver drug failed a trial and they announced it would be discontinued, the stock fell out of favor. The company still has a lot to offer, but a lot of investors turned away. Vertex is still profitable with patents in place until the 2030s on their cystic-fibrosis franchise of drugs and is still working on another alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency drug which is currently in phase 2 trials.
So like a few pharmaceutical analysis that I read, I’m thinking $VRTX might be undervalued and worth buying on market weakness (buying under $210)? Early this month, the Cowen analyst Phil Nadeau called Vertex a top large cap pick for 2021 saying, "we expect Vertex to recover in 2021 and would use the recent weakness to build a position in this premier biotech."
Comments