Dan Rasmussen and Greg Obenshain of Verdad Capital discuss their white paper on quantitative investing in biotech. Topics include why biotech’s complexity makes it attractive for systematic investors, how specialist fund ownership serves as a quality signal, and why insider buying and spending-based valuation metrics can outperform traditional financial analysis. The conversation also examines momentum within therapeutic categories, risk management on the short side, and how diversification and rebalancing help address biotech’s event-driven volatility.
This podcast is sponsored by Trata
I already know you’re going to like trata. Why? Because you’re reading this blog post, meaning you’re interested in this podcast. And trata is just like this podcast (though without the handsome host!). Trata is anonymized transcripts of buysiders discussing stocks they are following and what they really think will drive the stock. I’ve been mentioning it on the podcast for months, and the most frequent complaint I hear from people who check it out is they wish trata had more content on more of their stocks. They’ve been particular great for parsing through the recent SaaS sell off; see this free transcript on WIX for just one example.
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Transcript for paid subs begins below (Note: in order to get these up quickly, I post an AI generated transcript alongside the podcast. A professionally edited transcript comes a few days later; I replace the AI generated transcript once the professional one is available)