Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of biopharmaceutical drug developer NPS Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: NPSP) are taking some good medicine today, jumping as much as 11.7% on a sudden price-and-volume spike this afternoon.

So what: While NPS doesn't have any news to drive this move today, it works closely with Japanese drug developer Kyowa Hakko Kirin, which made a similar jump as it filed for regulatory review of a new leukemia treatment. How that news affects NPS is beyond me -- the company focuses on gastrointestinal disorders -- but it's the closest thing to an explanation I can find here.

Now what: NPS is a small-cap stock, but still too large and too closely followed by Wall Street analysts to indulge in shenanigans like this. I don't doubt that Kyowa Kirin investors (on the Tokyo exchange) have high hopes for their leukemia drug, but NPS owners really shouldn't care. The company's ties to Kyowa Kirin consist of Kyowa distributing an NPS-developed drug for hyperparathyroidism across Asia -- and I can't believe that my spell checker recognized "hyperparathyroidism" on sight.

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