Over the past year, I have been saying in this column, on our message boards, on radio, and TV all over the place, at conferences, etc., that I think the most exciting technology that will create the most value in the next century is BIOTECHNOLOGY.
Not the Internet.
Not wireless.
We first began by adding Amgen to our portfolio in December 1998, and in our announcement we wrote, "In fact, biotechnology is probably the ultimate Rule-Breaking industry of all time, which is why Amgen is so suitable to this portfolio. Biotechnology is not only Breaking the Rules of healthcare -- the ways that drugs have in the past been developed. Its genetic engineering could do something far more outrageous: redefine Life itself."
Since then, as of market close today, Amgen is up 226%, vs. the S&P 500 gain over the same period of 20%. Amgen spends much more on R&D today than any other biotech company, and if you've read some of the great analysis on our Biotechnology discussion board (and in many places in Fooldom), you've learned to regard the sheer amount of money a biotech company spends on research and development as a good future indicator.
One year later, December 1999, we added our second biotech company, Celera. At the time, Celera was trading 150,000 shares a day, at $79. That's $11.9 million in daily dollar volume. Today, Celera closed up $28 to $292, up 276% since the investment with the S&P 500 down 3% over that time.
How many dollars traded in the stock today, compared to the $11.9 million that traded in Celera when we first bought?
Jeepers. Multiply 841,900 shares times the closing price of $292 and you get $245.8 million. Slightly more than 20 times, in less than two months.
Whether you'd like to attribute some of that increased visibility, all of it, or none of it to The Motley Fool is your own business, and ultimately unimportant. What is most important and not debatable is that on December 17th, we found something revolutionary and good before lots and lots of other people. The Rule Breaker approach -- with its emphasis on innovation and the future, with its sights always trained on what is important and emerging -- struck again, finding another dynamic opportunity early on, which has led to staggering growth.
And frankly, it always should. We should strike again and again and again. We won't always make so much money so fast. In fact, we won't always make money; we'll make some dramatic errors, errors that will halve our investment, errors at which we will probably giggle at in retrospect, despite the pain (as we have with other past Fool losers). But the Rule Breaker approach to investing should always be finding the "Next Big Thing" way before most of the rest of the world discovers it.
None of this is to say I am right. I may not be right about biotechnology. Perhaps Amgen is at an all-time high. Perhaps Celera's intra-day high today will be a level we never see again. I can't say for sure.
But I subtitled today's report "I Told You So," because we really have been saying "Get educated about biotech, and if you have a long-term horizon and take good risk as an investor, get invested in it. It will be big." I myself began last year, reading first Improving Nature?, which is an excellent overview of biotech that in particular considers ethics. Then came Jonathan Weiner's beautifully written Time, Love, Memory, about the efforts of Seymour Benzer and his peers in the emerging and revolutionary field of behavioral genetics. And the new book that I haven't yet read but appears to be a good overview: Genome, by Matt Ridley -- written in, appropriately enough, 23 chapters.
But on this day in which our two biotech stocks shot higher, our top four Internet-focused companies -- America Online, Amazon.com, Excite@Home, and eBay -- all lost 4% or more. Put it all together and you actually have a gain -- a very small one, about in line with the Nasdaq today. (We beat the NOW 50 and the S&P 500.) But for the year, we are trailing the Nasdaq.
"If this guy's saying 'I told you so' about how he's so right, how come he's losing to the Nasdaq?" Great question. Well, first off I'm not really sweating this, because it's still early in the year, halfway through February. But second, I am a bit annoyed by this, given that I had wanted to get another one or two biotech entrants into the portfolio, oh, about three months ago. We'd be well ahead of all the market averages if we'd made this move.
Anyway, have you noticed that what was once a two-horse portfolio (AOL and Amazon) is now a portfolio that, before long, could see Celera as the top dollar holding? Scroll down below for the numbers, as usual, and when you do so you'll see that Celera ($184K) is just a few thousand short of passing Amazon.com ($187K), and not far behind AOL ($209K). It may not be long before Celera and Amgen bypass AOL and Amazon as the top holdings in the Rule Breaker port. And on that day, my fellow Fools, our dollars will be where our mouths have been.
Meanwhile, we search for new stocks. And you can join in the effort. I'm hosting a Rule Breaker seminar where you and I and others in the Fool community will be working together to locate the next crop of Rule Breakers. And it may be that out of that group comes this portfolio's next entrant. Whether or not that is the case isn't certain, but what is certain is that I'm very excited about the seminar and hope you'll join us.
Speaking of biotech, Human Genome Sciences (Nasdaq: HGSI) made a huge move (along with many other biotech stocks) as well today. One week ago, on a test basis, we began offering for sale outside investment research, written by some of our top discussion boards contributors. One is Greg Carlin, a.k.a. ElricSeven in Fooldom. Greg's report spends the first half giving an overview of the biotech industry, and the second focusing on -- which company? Human Genome Sciences. The research might be a good purchase, if you're interested. (Also, you can find Greg for free directly at his ElricSeven discussion board.)
Finally tonight, hey, how'd you like to chat about Rule Breakers in real-time? Yes? If you'd like to chat with me about Rule Breakers -- finding them, investing in them and more -- I'm headed to Yahoo! tonight to host a Rule Breaker chat at 9:00 p.m. EST. Click here and scroll down to learn more about it and then try to stop by.
That's Rule Breaking for today. Thanks for tuning in. Fool on!
David
