Some times -- okay, most times, a halt signals bad news. Not so today. This halt is designed to protect the careful longer term holders of Vertex, I am fairly certain.
There are always market manipulators out there, looking to pump or dump on one or two small comments made -- during the course of the FDA's Advisory Committee proceedings. And there will be some of those made, today -- in Maryland. This halt will largely blunt those attempts. (And so, trading in VRTX puts and calls is where these folks will now try to make a quick buck today.) Don't be fooled. VRTX is very likely to gap up when it repoens on the NASDAQ.
Per Associated Business Wires:
. . . .Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated announced that NASDAQ today halted trading of the company's common stock. The United States Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee meets today in Silver Spring, MD to review the New Drug Application (NDA) for telaprevir.
The NDA for telaprevir was granted Priority Review by the FDA, and the FDA is expected to make a decision on the approval of telaprevir by May 23, 2011 under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). The NDA includes data from three registration studies, ADVANCE, ILLUMINATE and REALIZE, which evaluated telaprevir in combination with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin in people who were not treated previously and in the three major subgroups of people who were treated previously but who were not cured with currently available medicines – relapsers, partial responders and null responders. . . .
Clearly this preserves a more orderly trading market for the shares. It is a wise move by the NASDAQ board of market-makers.
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