Merck & Co, a US-based research-driven global pharmaceutical company, is looking at entering more research collaborations with Indian companies in the next 12-18 months. This is part of the company's strategy to reduce both costs and time involved with drug discovery, which is increasingly getting unviable owing to a success rate of 7%.
Bharat M Chowrira, vice-president, Sirna Therapeutics, and executive director (licensing/ external research), Merck & Co, said the company was targeting research collaboration in India in the therapeutic diseases area including oncology, diabetics and neurological disorders.
According to Chowrira, the democratisation of research in terms of collaboration with other pharmaceutical research companies in countries like India would help offset both costs and time especially in phase-1 drug development and clinical trials.
Stating that there was just 1% improvement in the phase 3 success rate in drug discovery programmes across the industry since 1997, Chowrira said drug discovery programmes were becoming a tyranny with just 7% probability in success rate and the decrease in pipeline.
The company already has two collaborations in place with Bangalore-based Advinus Therapeutics and Nicholas Piramal and achieved the first milestone research with the former three months ahead in November 2007. This has given the company the much-needed boost to look at expanding collaborative research. The company is planning to expand research and development (R&D) across Asia.
Besides soliciting collaboration with Indian companies, Merck has entered into R&D-related agreements with several Indian research institutes, including the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education & Research (Niper), and National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). It is planning to support educational programmes to attract more research students in chemistry.
Among the other initiatives, the company is planning to use the screening database of 600,000 RNA interference to help reduce the time taken in drug discovery besides developing personalised medicines.
Understanding Short Term Trading
Before I begin, this blog is not for intraday traders. My definition of short term implies duration of around 2 to 3 months.
Short Term stock picking is no rocket science, but rather a visual interpretation of technical charts. A basic moving average on a time frame chart will show the direction of the securities movement.
Moving averages is a mathematical results calculated by averaging a number of past data points. Moving averages (MA) in it's basic form is calculated by taking the arithmetic mean of a given set of values on a rolling window of timeframe. Once the value of MA has been calculated, they are plotted onto a chart and then connected to create a moving average line. Typical moving averages used for short term trading are 50 MA and 100 MA.
Types of Moving Averages
1) Simple Moving Average (SMA)
SMA is calculated by taking the arithmetic mean of a given set of values on a rolling window of timeframe. The usefulness of the SMA is limited because each point in the data series is weighted the same, regardless of where it occurs in the sequence. Critics argue that the most recent data is more significant than the older data and should have a greater influence on the final result.
2) Exponential Moving Average (EMA)
EMA overcomes the limits of SMA, where more weight is given to the recent prices in an attempt to make it more responsive to new information. When calculating the first point of the EMA, we may notice that there is no value available to use as the previous EMA. This small problem can be solved by starting the calculation with a simple moving average and continuing on with calculating the EMA.
The primary functions of a moving average is to identify trends and reversals, measure the strength of an asset's momentum and determine potential areas where an asset will find support or resistance. Moving averages are lagging indicator, which means they do not predict new trend, but confirm trends once they have been established.
A stock is deemed to be in an uptrend when the price is above a moving average and the average is sloping upward. Conversely, a trader will use a price below a downward sloping average to confirm a downtrend. Many traders will only consider holding a long position in an asset when the price is trading above a moving average.
In general, short-term momentum can be gauged by looking at moving averages that focus on time periods of 50 days or less. Looking at moving averages that are created with a period of 50 to 100 days is generally regarded as a good measure of medium-term momentum. Finally, any moving average that uses 100 days or more in the calculation can be used as a measure of long-term momentum.
Support, resistence and stoploss can be infered by referring the closet MA below or above the market price. The other factor that is used in short term momentum is the trading volume. The moving averages along with the trading volume can provide a better insight to short term movement.
Markets are moved by their largest participants - I believe this is the single most important principle in short-term trading. Accordingly, I track the presence of large traders by determining how much volume is in the market and how that compares to average. Because volume correlates very highly with volatility, the market's relative volume helps you determine the amount of movement likely at any given time frame--and it helps you handicap the odds of trending vs. remaining slow and range bound.
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