October 22, 2014
- The scientists who really might find a cure for cancer…
- …and they’re super-sharp businesspeople, too
- The stock market’s manipulated? Say it ain’t so! (No, this is not a repeat of 2011)
- Inflation numbers, phony and real… the dangers of tweeting on deadline… readers pepper The 5 with oily conspiracy theories… and more!
“For the first time in my adult life, I am actually optimistic we may be looking at a cure for cancer,” says our technology maven Stephen Petranek — “not treatment, a cure.”
No, dear reader, we haven’t forgotten about Stephen’s trepidation over Ebola — shared in this space 12 days ago. But the number of Americans who’ve contracted the virus in America has stood at two for a week now.
So we’re gingerly crossing our fingers that his worst-case scenario won’t come to pass. If it does, you’ll have much more to worry about than the value of your portfolio. (The Laissez Faire Club will issue a follow-up report to their short and well-received Ebola e-book very soon. Watch this space for updates.)
But seeing as markets and investing are our primary beat at The 5, we press on…
Stephen is on to a company “developing a technology that can take the T cells in your body, those killer cells in your immune system, and re-engineer them to find cancer cells and kill them.
“They can teach your body’s own cells to seek out and destroy tumors.”
Now, if you’re hip to the science of cancer, you’re probably a bit skeptical: “Immunotherapy” to fight cancer has a long and disappointing history — 40 years’ worth, in fact.
This new therapy is something else altogether. It works like this: Doctors take blood from a cancer patient and put it in an extremely high-tech version of a test tube. In the test tube, T cells are withdrawn from the blood and re-engineered so they can identify and attach to a specific kind of cancer that’s growing in that patient.
“The new T cells are infused into the patient,” Stephen goes on, “where they multiply, proliferate and grow.” The process takes all of six days.
This cancer therapy heralds nothing less than the advent of “personalized medicine.”
We’ve hinted at it in our digital pages as long as five years ago. It’s a field of medicine based on your body and your body alone.
“And you need it to find and fight cancers,” says Stephen, “because the human immune system is terrible at finding cancer cells. Cancers have evolved to evade the immune system in much the same way that bacteria have modified themselves to be resistant to antibiotics.”
Five years ago, personalized medicine was all very hypothetical. No more.
“This isn’t theory,” Stephen emphasizes — “these cells are killing cancers in patients in FDA-approved trials at this very moment.
“A dramatic percentage of these patients are going into remission.”
Indeed, they are. Thirteen patients got the treatment in a recent study. “These are very ill patients,” says Stephen, “many of whom had been treated with various chemotherapies and failed to respond.”
Eight of the 13 went into complete remission… and four more had partial remission.
“One look at the before and after CAT scans of a patient previously riddled with cancer who has been given these cells and you will be struck with awe.”
Below is a scan of a 47-year-old patient afflicted with 70 non-Hodgkin tumors, as shown on the left. Then the patient was treated with engineered immune system T cells much like the ones this company is working on.
“Two weeks later,” says Stephen, “the patient was in remission.” Those black blobs on the “after” picture? Those are normal.
Two weeks of treatment and the patient is in remission
(the black splotches on the right are normal)…
The company’s story would be impressive enough if were only about a breakthrough cancer treatment that puts nearly two-thirds of its patients in full remission.
But the scientists behind it are also savvy businesspeople.
“There is nothing out there like what this company is doing,” Stephen explains…
“…a company that quietly but methodically locked up every patent in the world applicable to their technology. A company that has recruited the best and brightest in the field of immunology to join their team, including the pioneers of immune therapy that go back three decades, to the beginning of the field. A company that then pulled off the impossible — it convinced the National Cancer Institute to become an exclusive partner.
“Yes, the federal government’s core intelligence on cancer and immunology has flowed into a cooperative research and development agreement with this small pharmaceutical company.”
Stephen clued in readers of Breakthrough Technology Alert to the name and ticker symbol of this company early last week.
If you subscribe today, you can read that issue. And you can also see a special report identifying five more world-changing companies capable of delivering “ultra-wealth.” Stephen’s never seen anything else like it in 40 years of research. Click here to seize on the opportunity.
To the markets, where stocks are adding to yesterday’s big gains. The S&P 500, which closed at a sickly 1,862 last Thursday, is now less than two points away from 1,950.
Earnings season is in full swing; Dow Chemical, a longtime favorite of Outstanding Investments editor Byron King, turned in a better-than-expected performance and is up more than 1% on the day.
The one economic number of note is the consumer price index — up 0.1% in September.
Decreases in energy prices were offset by increases in food, shelter and health care.
The year-over-year increase works out to 1.7%.
Moments after the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered those figures, the Social Security Administration announced next year’s cost-of-living adjustment will be… drumroll, please… 1.7%.
As we always say when discussing these numbers, any resemblance to your own cost of living is purely coincidental. In reality, the cost of living grew 9.4% in the last year, according to John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics. He runs the numbers the way the government did back in the late ’70s, when they were still honest. (Well, more or less…)
“Someone tried to rescue the market last Wednesday,” writes John Crudele of the New York Post. “And it’s becoming a regular occurrence.”
Mr. Crudele is lending credence to a reader’s suggestion that the “Plunge Protection Team” intervened in stocks last week.
As a reminder, the “PPT” — its actual name is the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets — is made up of the Federal Reserve chair, the Treasury secretary, and the secretaries of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Crudele says a week ago yesterday, when the S&P cratered 44 points, “someone (or something) started buying S&P futures contracts en masse. Twenty-one minutes later, the S&P index had regained 30 of those lost points…
“Welcome to a new kind of stock market,” he concludes — “one that the average investor should refuse to be invested in.”
Oy…
“The market has always been rigged,” wrote our Chris Mayer three years ago, “against the little man who thinks he is going to whip in and out of stocks and trade with the big boys.”
In light of Crudele’s column, it’s time to return to a point we addressed around Labor Day 2011. At that time, there was outrage over phony bids and high-frequency trading — which also showed up in some funky S&P futures action.
Remember that? Of course you don’t. Everyone moved on. “High-frequency trading” today is just another variation on the “program trading” that was so roundly denounced after the 1987 crash. It’s simply part of the market landscape. Ditto the Plunge Protection Team ever since President Reagan formed it in 1988.
No, we might not like it… but unless you’ve given up your day job and bet your retirement on your trading prowess, what’s it to you?
“The only real advantage an individual investor has,” said Chris back then, “is his ability to sit on his hands.
“He doesn’t have to report to anyone quarterly or monthly about his results. He doesn’t have to play the performance game. He can buy what he likes at what prices he wants and wait to sell them at prices more favorable.
“I think there are many other stocks in which you could just sit and be much richer, say, three years hence.”
And indeed, there were. We mentioned Kennedy-Wilson (KW) on Tuesday, a pick of Chris’ from early 2012 that’s up 118%. (For access to Chris’ picks, look here.)
Even Jim Rickards, the newest member of our team, has a handful of stocks to recommend to his paying subscribers despite the financial crisis he sees looming. (Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence is currently closed to new subscribers. Watch this space in the coming days for an announcement.)
Bottom line: It makes no more sense to avoid stocks because the stock market’s manipulated than it does to avoid gold because the gold market’s manipulated. What’s your alternative? Bonds, when interest rates are at three-decade lows? Cash? That’s the ultimate Fed-manipulated asset and a guaranteed loser. (See above about consumer prices.)
The only other viable alternative is a stash of ammo and No. 10 Mountain House cans. And if that’s how you feel, we’re not going to be much help to you…
O, the perils of preserving your business’ good name in the social-media age…
As you might know, last night was Game 1 of baseball’s World Series, San Francisco vs. Kansas City. Obviously, the game was a big TV draw in those two locales.
In Kansas City, one of the TV stations not carrying the game spared no effort to get people to switch away for its 10:00 p.m. news.
CBS affiliate KCTV tweeted the following: “Need a break from the game? Watch our 10 p.m. news for latest on a body found in the Little Blue River & more.”
Really, now?
Uh… would you like a do-over, KCTV?
Yes, we’re sure you would…
Alrighty then, care to try again?
It’s moments like these, your editor is grateful I left the TV news racket when I did…
“What are your thoughts,” a reader writes, “about the U.S. government selling oil futures against the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to force down the price and punish Russia? I had a conspiracy dream last night.”
“Am I the only person,” another conspiracy-minded reader writes, “who finds the drop in oil prices and subsequent drop in gasoline prices strange, as it occurs right before an election in which the Democrats are in trouble?”
The 5: “The SPR has been regularly toyed with to affect oil prices over the years, and its impact has at times been substantial,” Jim Norman wrote in his 2008 book The Oil Card, which chronicles regular SPR machinations under both Clinton and Bush the Younger.
There’s been no SPR release of late — at least not one that’s been publicized. Selling futures against the SPR? That’s a new one, but who knows.
It’s Mr. Norman’s contention — thoroughly documented in his book — that Washington pulled strings in the 1980s to keep oil prices low to weaken the Soviet Union, and to keep oil prices high in the 2000s to slow China’s growth.
The longer oil holds above $80 — it’s $83.25 as we write — the more it looks as if the China thesis is still in play, Washington’s dislike for Russia notwithstanding. Oil’s held the line on $80 continuously since mid-2010. Which is remarkable when you consider the first time it ever reached $80 was September 2007…
“I do not understand,” a reader writes about the Georgia woman losing her home to a $94.85 tax arrearage, “why the outstanding balance in taxes owed did not appear on the statements, which were paid in full.
“If there was no owing balance on statements after the bills were paid, that should prove that the older debt was written off!”
The 5: Excellent question. There’s an update, meanwhile: The woman has “now been told she can keep her home,” reports WSB-TV, “as long as she pays a $300 late fee.”
What that means for the person or persons who bought the house at auction, we don’t know…
Best regards,
Dave Gonigam
The 5 Min. Forecast