Diamonds and Dogs

5/29/15

Humana (HUM) jumped 20% today after the company announced they are putting themselves on the block for sale. Press reports say that Aetna (AET) and Cigna (CI) have held preliminary discussions with Humana already.  This move could possibly be the first domino to fall in an overdue managed care mergers and acquisitions culminating in 3 major managed care companies and multiple strategic actions among the second tier players.

Bristol-Myers' (BMY) stock fell more than 6% today amid concerns about data released regarding the use of the drug Opdivo in patients suffering from the most common form of lung cancer. A previous sister study published earlier this month gave hopes to Bristol shareholders that their drug would show meaningful benefit even among patients with tumors that express low levels of PD-L1, but today's data showed no benefit from using Opdivo in patients with tumors with a low expression of PD-L1. A tough break for the patients and Bristol shareholders.