Another interesting week, in which I think we have created potential for the coming days and weeks.
CRISPR-Tech
Our best performing positions are currently the CRISPR-Tech stocks like Cellectis SA $CLLS, Merk Inc $MRK, Editas Medicine Inc $EDIT, Intellia Therapeutics $NTLA and Sangamo Biosciences Inc $SGMO. CRISPR stocks are highly speculative, so setbacks are to be expected, but the potential upside in gene editing is enormous.
Crypto-currencies
I have further reduced our crypto-currency holdings. Just before eToro increases the weekend spread, I have  gone one step further, partially hedging the remaining crypto-buy-positions, with so far only one short each on Dash and Bitcoind each. I would love to open a few more sell positions, specially on Ripple, but, as cryptos are purely speculative, I find it incredibly difficult to gauge the entry points. I hope the smoke lifts sufficiently, to allow me to see which of the opposite positions (buy and sell) I should close. I found eToro’s crypto discussion on Thursday informative in that I feel that the participants (eToro traders liamdavies, Wesl3y, Jaynemesis, stebliss, matthewne) failed to address the central questions putting crypto coins’ medium term value in doubt; eToro failed to put up a single panellist questioning cryptos as to create a debate.
If you are heavily invested on cryptos, you may want to consider copying my crypto-sceptic portfolio as a hedge.
FOREX: EUR/USD
ECB chief Mario Draghi failed to stop the Euro’s rise against the greenback. Though the US president has then said that he is supporting a strong Dollar – this may have been because he simply finds the word “strong” appealing. For its unpredictability, we have no US-Dollar currency positions in our portfolio. The drop in the value of the US-Dollars is in the short term bad news for selling CHF/JPY and in particular GBP/CAD, where I had to cut losses on two positions (eToro’s risk ratings unfortunately force popular investor’s hands in such circumstances), check the situations and I re-entered later with a smaller profit. The US-Dollar’s extreme weakness is – at least in theory – also bad news for European stocks, e.g. Unilever plc $ULVR.L and Commerzbank AG $CBK.DE. I closed Commerzbank at €13.59 and a profit of 10.13%. Though thanks to sustained growth in the Eurozone, European exchanges remained largely unaffected by the common currency’s appreciation.
In view of the €997 million fine against LTE chipmaker Qualcomm Inc imposed by the European anti-monopoly watchdog, I opened a CFD short position in Qualcomm $QCOM at not particularly lucky $67.44. It is near break even and I will close it soon.
Looking at Paris
We closed a buy position in Essilor International SA $EI.PA of Charenton-le-Pont (Val-de-Marne), France, at a small profit and opened a buy in L’Oréal SA at €183.97 – analysts see a target well above €200 for $OR.PA.
Green bio-pharma
The two bio-pharma stocks in our portfolio, AbbVie Inc $ABBV of Chicago and GW Pharmaceuticals plc of Cambridge, UK (my second home), are growing well (no pun intended). Before I could get around to readjusting the take profits, our position in $GWPH with leverage x2 hit a take profit overnight. I took the opportunity to open a new position in GW Pharmaceuticals plc without leverage.
Have a good weekend and profitable trades!