When the market goes up, does anyone really care why? Today is a good example. The Fed said what it said, which is what it usually says, which is usually not much on the specific side of life and the market loves it. Here we are again, the market marching upward toward its record highs.
Well, let that be as it is. The market is still playing the Fed game. In the meantime, I want to point out three things – something good, something bad, and something to do with batteries, specifically energy storage.
The Good
- In 2013 Wright’s cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, was destroyed with a new type of treatment in which cells from his immune system, called T cells, were removed from his blood, genetically engineered to target his cancer, and then dripped back into his veins.
This gene therapy has been applied in numerous cases with results suggesting that the end might be near for this cancerous killer.
- Earlier results in Philadelphia and New York had been close to miraculous. In 90 percent of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia that has returned and resists regular drugs, the cancer goes away. The chance of achieving remission in these circumstances is usually less than 10 percent.
And guess what? The company that created the therapy is not a small startup looking for funding to sell its cancer cure.
- Those results explain why a company called Juno Therapeutics raised $304 million when it went public in December, 16 months after its founding.
And guess what, again? Juno isn’t the only company out there working on this line of cancer treatment.
- Juno isn’t the only company chasing the T-cell idea. More than 30 companies have started clinical tests or are planning them, including Novartis, which says it may file for approval for a competing leukemia treatment in 2016. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last summer gave both Novartis and Juno so-called breakthrough designation, meaning that their leukemia treatments could be approved after only one larger clinical trial.
This is good stuff for those who have cancer and for those who love someone with cancer, and, as well, for those who like buying into innovative ideas that just might make them some money.
The Bad
Greed is a bad thing, but arrogance coupled with greed turns my stomach and it is one thing that breeds a sense of a hopeless future for humankind.
- Thomas Hayes, a former trader on trial over charges he manipulated benchmark rates, told prosecutors in 2013 that UBS Group AG distributed “an instruction manual on fixing Libor” to suit their trading positions.
Acting criminally for money with complete disregard for the effect on others, and to commit those acts openly with arrogance is a choice. The Libor manipulators chose to manipulate the numbers so a small few could make millions, while a large few lost billions, and, apparently, they did not try to cover it up, at least not well.
- The problem was exacerbated because the managers who oversaw Libor submissions also had large trading positions based on the benchmark, Hayes added.
It is the “everyone else is doing it” mindset and I just don’t know how we humans rid ourselves of folks who think it is okay to destroy others for personal gain.
The Battery Thing
- A group of Stanford researchers have come up with a nanoscale “designer carbon” material that can be adjusted to make energy storage devices, solar panels, and potentially carbon capture systems more powerful and efficient.
Not much else to say about the above other than, like the T-cell treatment for cancer mentioned above, technology is moving fast to make our world a better place. Battery storage and more efficiency in providing energy from clean sources not only make the world a better place, they also provide opportunity for making money. Think battery storage.
Unlike the greedy folks, this other stuff makes me feel, well, hopeful about the future. In fact, knowing what I know, arrogance and greed only anger me for a moment, and then I go back to the larger percentage of us who work for the good of all, not the gain for one.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
