• Is this how we cure cancer?
  • What the mainstream press didn’t tell you about IPOs in 2019
  • You won’t believe who hacked Jeff Bezos’ phone

Dear Reader,

It is hard not to talk about the coronavirus out of Wuhan, China, when the Nasdaq Composite is down more than 3% on the back of news that the virus is spreading.

This affects not just the technology markets but all financial markets.

I clearly remember the outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong back in 2003. Why? Because I was actually there. I was living in Tokyo at the time and doing a lot of business in Hong Kong. I was typically there once a month.

I had heard about the SARS outbreak but didn’t think much of it. I traveled to Hong Kong thinking that things would be operating as normal… They weren’t. The airport, the airport express train, the taxi lines, and even the streets were remarkably less busy for such a bustling city.

Arriving at my hotel, I found an empty lobby. The atrium area for afternoon tea, which is normally packed, held just a few people.

I realized then that my decision to travel wasn’t very smart. I stayed one night and returned to Tokyo the next morning without ever leaving the hotel. More than 700 people died from the SARS outbreak.

The outbreak of coronavirus looks worse. It is now spreading exponentially.

China has quarantined Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, and just added other cities like Huanggang, Ezhou, and Chiba. And the Western world doesn’t know how bad things really are… China is not openly sharing what is actually happening.

This is not the right approach. The ramifications are too severe, and the effort to contain this virus must be done through open international communication and collaboration.

Right now, we don’t have all the information to make an informed judgment of this outbreak. All I can say is that my gut tells me the coronavirus could be much worse than what I experienced in Hong Kong with SARS.

I hope I am very wrong, but as investors, we can expect more market volatility if I am right.

Now for today’s insights…

The one treatment to cure all cancer…

Huge news came out in the fight against cancer last week.

Researchers from Cardiff University discovered an unusual T cell capable of killing a wide range of cancers. They published the details in the journal Nature Immunology, which is a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

T cells are a type of white blood cell that seeks out and kills abnormal cells in the body, like cancer cells. We’ve known about them for a long time now. And we already have specific cancer treatments like CAR T therapies that leverage T cells for treatment.

But these treatments only work against a small number of cancers. They just aren’t effective against most cancer types.

That’s why this discovery is so incredible. In testing, researchers at Cardiff found that this specific type of T cell could find and kill cells linked to lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney, and cervical cancers… all while leaving healthy cells intact.

The ramifications here are extraordinary. What if we had a single treatment that could be used to cure cancer once and for all? That’s potentially what we are talking about here.

And here’s an interesting twist that caught my eye – how did the researchers find these unusual T cells? Well, they used CRISPR-Cas9 genetic editing technology.

Remember, CRISPR can edit our genetic code as if it were software. This technology has the potential to cure every disease of genetic origin. And we just keep finding more and more new applications for this amazing technology. In this case, it was used for the discovery of a certain kind of T cell.

So this is a development we will track closely.

Surely a biotech company out there will look at this research and want to develop it further. That would require striking a licensing deal with the Cardiff researchers and the university. This is not unusual.

A biotech company would strike a licensing and royalty deal with the university to develop the science into an actual therapy. And the lead researchers would get advisory roles as well as compensation and ownership in the company.

I’ll be keeping a watch out for a company that shows interest in this kind of a deal. It would certainly be a company to track.

2019 was a great year for IPOs…

If we listen to the mainstream financial press, we’d think last year was awful for initial public offerings (IPOs). The press point to two events for support…

The first was Uber’s performance after its highly touted IPO. Uber went public at $45 per share on May 10… and it plunged 18% in two trading days. And by November, the stock had lost 42% of its value.

The other event was the bizarre IPO filing by The We Company, the parent company of WeWork.

When the financials went public, it became clear that WeWork was not on strong financial footing. And when the market caught on to this, the IPO was shelved. WeWork’s valuation plummeted by more than 84% as a result.

I covered both insights in The Bleeding Edge. In fact, at the time of Uber’s IPO, I warned readers not to buy. Instead, I suggested reassessing the stock in six months’ time. As it turns out, UBER bottomed nearly six months to the day I penned that issue.

Readers can review my coverage of Uber and WeWork here and here. These two events certainly put a damper on the IPO market last year. But that’s not the full picture…

The final numbers show that 2019 was actually a great year for IPOs.

In total, 87 venture-backed companies went public. That’s about on par with the number for 2018. Combined, these 87 companies raised $26.3 billion in the IPO market. That was an $11 billion increase over 2018.

So the amount of money raised through IPOs was significantly larger in 2019 than in the year before. That’s not a surprise considering we had large companies like Uber, Lyft, and Slack go public. And that speaks to a key point…

Tech and biotech dominated the IPO landscape. In fact, 76 of the 87 venture-backed IPOs were tech and biotech companies. That’s 87%.

This goes to show how much money is flowing into bleeding-edge technology companies today. We discussed that dynamic last week when we talked about why 2020 will be a stock picker’s market.

The pipeline for tech and biotech IPOs is larger than it has ever been before. Because of this, 2020 will be a fantastic year for IPOs. And that’s very exciting news for our investment prospects.

Specifically, readers of my early stage trading service, Early Stage Trader, should pay close attention. This pipeline of exciting tech IPOs will be an excellent target for us this year.

For any readers who haven’t joined but would like to profit from the IPO boom of 2020, I encourage you to go right here.

How Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked…

This is a strange story…

Last year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked. And very personal and private photographs were released as a result. Many readers have probably heard the embarrassing details of the story.

The big question was – how did this happen? And it appears we now have an answer…

A recent article by The New York Times covered the incredible story. The article ties the hacking to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS. The research shows that MBS sent Bezos a video message through the messaging application WhatsApp. That video infected Bezos’ phone with malware.

That happened in May 2018. And logs show how data was being downloaded from Bezos’ phone after he played the video message. This hack effectively allowed the Saudi government to surveil Bezos.

We may be wondering why the Saudis would do this.

Were they hoping to gain leverage over Bezos? Perhaps they wanted an inside track on what one of the most powerful executives in the world was planning? It seems logical that they would have an interest in Bezos’ involvement in The Washington Post (which he owns and which covered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi).

Perhaps time will tell.

This is scary to think about it. Hacking a smartphone has become as easy as sending a video message. And once hacked, all the contents of the phone can be accessible to the hacker.

Of course, most of us are not likely to be targeted because we don’t have the notoriety and assets that Jeff Bezos does. Still, this is a great reminder that we should all be very careful when dealing with files and attachments.

Put simply, I recommend never opening a file or watching a video unless you know exactly where it is coming from. While it may be unlikely that a nation-state would be interested in our own dealings, there is a $1 trillion-plus industry out there of cybercrime that is happy to take advantage of unknowing consumers.

Regards,

Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge

P.S. Once again, thanks to readers who showed up to watch my Timed Stocks Summit last week. I’m always excited to share my research in the area of early stage biotech.

As regular readers of The Bleeding Edge know well, there’s a growing number of companies on the cusp of curing diseases that were once thought untreatable. That’s why some of the best opportunities for investing in 2020 will appear in the biotech space.

If you haven’t had a chance to catch my presentation yet, make sure to do so before midnight tomorrow when the video goes offline. Go here to watch now.

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