What one change in your daily routine will make the greatest difference: a) in your trading and b) in your life?
How we live our lives shapes our habits and our mindsets. We cannot live one kind of life and expect to do a different kind of trading.
If we live a life filled with drama or a life filled with inconsistency or a life filled with negative self-talk, that is what we will bring to our trading. It’s also what we bring to our future.
Who we are in the present and how we live right now shapes who we become. Each day is a practice session for our future. If we practice the right things, we develop the right ways.
Too many traders mess up today and reassure themselves that it was all a good learning lesson.
Bullshit.
The learning comes from actively correcting the mess up–and then making that correction a regular part of your trading and your life.
In some measure, be the person today you want to become in the future. That is climbing the ladder of development rung by rung. How we act shapes how we experience ourselves. Our routines create habits and our habits become part of ourselves.
We don’t have to impose discipline if we have developed the right behaviors as habits.
Eisai (ESALY). and Merck (MRK) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has extended the action date for the supplemental New Drug Application for lenvatinib for the potential first-line treatment of patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma. The FDA has indicated that the extension of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act date is needed to allow additional time for review of the application. The agency expects to complete the review on or before August 24, 2018, thus extending the target action date by a standard extension period of three months from the original PDUFA action date of May 24, 2018. Eisai, as the marketing authorization holder, is working closely with the FDA to support the continued review of this application. Lenvatinib is approved by the U.S. FDA for the treatment of locally recurrent or metastatic, progressive, radioactive iodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer. Lenvatinib is also approved by the U.S. FDA in combination with everolimus for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma following one prior anti-angiogenic therapy.
Medtronic price target raised to $96 from $90 at Piper Jaffray. Piper Jaffray analyst Matt O’Brien raised his price target on Medtronic to $96 after its Q4 earnings beat, saying the constant currency revenue growth was evident across geographies and segments, while operating margins expanded by 50bps. The analyst adds that the business has “solid momentum” after consecutive quarters where organic growth topped 6.5%. O’Brien further notes that the “meaningful” product cycle ahead also makes the valuation discount on the stock relative to its peer group “unwarranted”. The analyst keeps his Overweight rating on Medtronic
With Medicare Advantage (MA) expected to take on continued importance in the coming years, payers will need to transform their marketing efforts or risk losing millions of dollars, Accenture Consultingsaid in a new report.
The report said nearly half of Americans are delaying retirement and don’t plan on enrolling in Medicare until after the age of 65. Plus, slightly more than half of them will shop for a Medicare plan online as they approach eligibility.
Accenture said the combination of these two factors show that payers need to “fundamentally rethink how they market to Medicare consumers.”
MA is an increasingly important market for payers, and Accenture said those that move into capturing this audience will have substantial revenue opportunities in the coming years.
An average of 10,000 people turn 65 every day, which brings in a new infusion of potential members daily. However, Accenture said many are delaying Medicare rather than signing up immediately. Payers will need to figure out ways to improve conversion rates on those seniors to capture additional revenue or risk losing hundreds of millions in revenue over time.
Accenture said payers are “missing this opportunity by not delivering tools and experiences that address the social realities and digital intensity of consumers aging into Medicare eligibility.”
Accenture estimates that 20% to 40% of prospective Medicare beneficiaries are not ready for the program when they turn 65. They may still work or have coverage through a spouse. Rather than wait until a person is 65, Accenture suggested that payers should engage all consumers before they reach eligibility and find out their retirement plans. That will help outreach efforts once those people are 65 and older.
This can help payers target outreach for that specific person. For example, a payer may send regular information to a person not yet ready for Medicare to keep the prospective member updated. These communications also include a way for that person to sign up when they’re ready. That marketing strategy keeps a person engaged and builds trust with the payer, Accenture said.
Another added benefit to marketing differently and connecting with people comfortable with technology is that people already managing their health are more likely to “do things that keep them healthy, such as track physical activity, monitor blood pressure and monitor cholesterol. These self-managing customers are just the type that a health plan wants in a new value-driven payment world,” Accenture said.
After an initial tie-up in December 2016, AstraZeneca and Bicycle Therapeutics will expand their development deal to include additional targets in the respiratory and cardio-metabolic space.
The original collaboration included an undisclosed number of targets and, at the time, Bicycle said it was “eligible for over $1 billion in payments, including an upfront payment, future R&D funding, development, regulatory and commercialization milestones.” The most recent statement says the deal is now valued in “excess of $1 billion.”
The expansion increases the number of targets the companies are pursuing and triggers an unspecified milestone payment for Bicycle.
While Bicycle’s own focus is on oncology, the small U.K. biotech has tapped its bicyclic peptide platform to develop therapeutics for its big pharma counterpart. The compounds Bicycle develops are small peptides stretching between nine to 15 amino acids long. The company touts their ability to combine the “specificity and affinity” of antibodies, but in a small molecule form that allows for better solubility and dosing flexibility.
The last few years have been a struggle for AstraZeneca, which has sought to prove itself in oncology while selling off unwanted assets. To that end, the company has made a number of licensing deals that monetize products no longer a part of the company’s core focus.
Most recently, the British pharma sold the rights to the antipsychotic Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate) in several countries outside the U.S. Before that, it spun out six experimental drugs into a standalone biotech that will focus on autoimmune diseases.
AstraZeneca currently has three compounds in its late-stage cardio-metabolic pipeline. Just this past Friday, it won U.S. approval for Lokelma, previously known as ZS-9, for the treatment of hyperkalemia, or high blood potassium. It also has six compounds in Phase 2 and three in Phase 1 in the space, including for type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and chronic kidney disease.
Both its cardio-metabolic and respiratory pipelines are significantly smaller than its cancer pipeline. The company has been trying to compete with oncology majors like Merck & Co. and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Yet, the British pharma has had a number of setbacks in the oncology space.
Last month, a combination of its immunotherapies Imfinzi (durvalumab) and tremelimumab failed to hit its primary endpoint in a Phase 3 study of previously treated lung cancer patients.
Prior to that, AstraZeneca disappointed investors when it pushed back the final readout of its MYSTIC study. An earlier analysis from the trial showed the same combo failed to extend progression-free survival in first-line non-small cell lung cancer patients, although the company hopes the study will prove the regimen can extend overall survival.
AstraZeneca will need several of these programs to pan out; the company has been chasing a goal of $45 billion in annual revenues, but only achieved $22 billion for the full-year 2017.
A decade ago, the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii was identified as one of the six most common and serious multidrug-resistant pathogens, largely because of its propensity to spread in hospitals, causing infections like sepsis and pneumonia. Scientists have long known that A. baumannii resists treatment with antibiotics by building a capsule to protect itself—they just haven’t been able to figure out exactly how the bug achieves this feat.
A team at Tufts University School of Medicine has published new research that explains how A. baumannii builds this protective coating, allowing it to become more virulent as it continues to evade destruction from antibiotics. The key is a network of molecules that turn specific genes on and off.
The molecular network that the Tufts researchers focused on is called BfmRS. First they genetically altered strains of the bacteria to either activate or cripple the network. When they activated it, they found that BfmRS caused sepsis in mice that was widely resistant to antibiotics.
Then they used RNA sequencing to reprogram A. baumannii’s genes, and in so doing discovered that BfmRS controls genes that influence cell division and the protective envelope around cells, according to a statement.
But the Tufts team also discovered mutations that allowed the bacterium to resist antibiotics without help from BfmRS. The researchers made that discovery by studying one strain of A. baumannii in which BfmRS was deleted. They published their findings in the journal PLOS Pathogens.
The effort to combat multidrug-resistant infections has pulled in scientists from both academia and industry. Among the players are Macrolide Pharma, which raised $20 million in funding and recruited Novartis veteran Mahesh Karande as it CEO in April. In March, Genentech announced it identified an enzyme on the surface of drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria that can be targeted with an antibody, weakening the outer membrane just enough to kill the bug.
The research at Tufts is partially supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which has been funding a range of research projects under the National Action Plan for Combating Antiobiotic-Resistant Bacteria, launched in 2015.
“We revealed that a single two-protein system controls a global network of proteins that is critical for making A. baumannii a threat,” the authors said in their paper. They believe BfmRS could be directly targeted to battle drug-resistant infections.
An example of a warning message used in the study. Credit: University of Melbourne
New research suggests graphic warnings on junk food packaging would prove an effective deterrent to consumers when deciding what to eat – and it appears the more graphic and negative the message the better.
The finding by researchers at the University of Melbourne and Cancer Council Victoria reinforces arguments for mandatory health warnings on unhealthy food as an effective tool in improving diets and combatting rising rates of obesity-related chronic diseases.
In the study, 95 hungry participants were shown colour pictures of 50 different snack foods ranging from chips, chocolate bars and biscuits to nuts, fruits and vegetables.
They were asked to rate on a scale how much they would like to eat each food at the end of the experiment. Participants were then shown a number of different healthwarnings and asked to rate a similar set of 50 snack foods.
The research, published in the journals NeuroImage: Clinical and Appetite, found negative text combined with images was twice as effective at changing people’s choices than messages that had negative text-only content or those with images combined with positive text.
In addition, participants’ brain activity was monitored with electrodes attached to their heads. The study found warning labels prompted participants to exercise more self-control rather than act on impulse.
University of Melbourne researcher and study co-author Stefan Bode said: “The study shows that if you want to stop people choosing fatty and sugary packaged foods, health warnings actually work.
“It sheds light on the mechanisms in the brain that underlie the effects of health warning messages on food processing,” Dr. Bode said.
Cancer Council Victoria behavioural researcher and study co-author Helen Dixon said the project has helped identify which types of health messages are most effective at prompting healthier food choices.
“Strong cues, like anticipated taste, tend to work on us in a more unconscious way, and therefore health messages need to disrupt these more impulsive, hedonistic responses to foods and make people consciously consider the health implications of their choices,” Dr. Dixon said.
She called for the government to improve and make mandatory the Health Star Rating system on foods, which was launched in 2014 and aims to encourage consumers to make better food choices.
More information: Daniel H. Rosenblatt et al. Food product health warnings promote dietary self-control through reductions in neural signals indexing food cue reactivity, NeuroImage: Clinical (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2018.03.004
