Catalyst Stocks

Monday, December 17, 2012

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.