It's Complicated

Picking stocks isn't easy. Take Amicus Therapeutics, Inc.(NASDAQ:FOLD) for example. Earlier this week it popped up on our radar due to increased investments by Glaxo, increasingly strong technical support, and increasing volume. All signs pointed to go until they announced a late stage study of the drug migalastat HCI didn't meet its primary goal. The stock dropped significantly although it was still up 67% this year.

Todays free stock pick: Ariad Pharmaceuticals (ARIA)up 5.91%. Although ARIA had a very clear "sell-the-news" reaction to the FDA approval of the company's chronic myelogenous (CML) drug iclusig (ponatinib) on friday, it is rebounding today. The catch for the drug approval is that the drug can only be used for Ph+ patients that are resistant to prior tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatments, but this only cuts out ~5% of the 5,000 new cases of CML in the United States each year. For the most part, everyone was expecting ARIA to get a drug approval (although the timing wasn't as certain, since the original PDUFA action date for ARIA was March 27, 2013. ARIA's sell the news lopped off over 20% of the stock's price on Friday alone, but the overall long-run gains that shareholders saw this year have been very solid. ARIA is up about 55% YTD, and offers good potential in 2013 despite it's expensive price.