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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

Positive News For Our Puts

September 28, 2021September 27, 2021

But first . . .

Required reading, in case you missed it: Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here, by Robert Kagan.

Serious stuff going down.  Better to fight it now, with votes, political activism, contributions . . . and multiple. long, respectful conversations with nice people who’ve been misled . . . than to see it play out in horrible ways, at which January 6th could just prove to have been a hint.




STON, suggested September 16 at $1.92, popped a little yesterday on this letter to the board.  I have no clue what will happen, if anything at all.  We’ll have been robbed if, say, the stock is worth $15 and, a few months from now, we have to settle for $5.25; though I can think of worse things.

EVLO, meanwhile — here, here, and here — yesterday issued what it called positive phase 2 results. The stock — $13.49 when Guru suggested buying puts (betting it would go down) — closed up 17 cents at $7.42 yesterday (and then fell to $7.01 in after-hours trading).

I understand none of the science.  In case you do — or don’t but, like me, bought October and November puts — I offer Guru’s take on that “positive” news:


The primary analysis is the mean change in PASI, and you will see in paragraph three that there is no “p<0.05,” but instead some comment I’ve never seen used for a phase 2 that it was 80% – 90% probable on a Bayesian basis– that’s doublespeak for “it failed.” (Bayesian analysis is usually used for other assessments.)

The next paragraph  lists one of about 100 secondary endpoints, where they found “p less than 0.05” for the lowest two doses, but not the highest dose which had the weakest efficacy on this endpoint.  Random analysis would say that of 100 endpoints you can see five that are “p<0.05” just by chance, and they’ve so far found two.

Almost any failed trial will have this kind of “success.”

The trial failed.

There’s always some chance the stock rallies a bit anyway just because the analysts are more brain-dead now than ever before, but October is the month the mutual funds have to register tax losses, so there is a reasonable case that it continues to selloff into the end of the week and next week, to probably something around $5.

Note that all the “efficacy” at week 16 is “loss of efficacy” in the placebo from week 12 to 16– which won’t happen in a second trial.


 

Positive news indeed.



 

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