ASCO Not What Your Biotechs Can Do for You...

...ask what they can do for this market.

With the Dow selling gaining steam today, and a Goldman Sachs headline about insider trading not helping the cause, more pressure seems to be building on tech and biotech to do the heavy lifting for bulls. There still remain fears about Italy, and now European banking titan DB is in the bears' crosshairs again like it was in 2016. 

However, the XBI ETF for small and mid-cap biotechnology issues is higher by nearly 1.5% as I write this, an impressive risk-on accomplishment for bulls given the macro backdrop and giveback in the Dow from yesterday's gains. 

This XBI is occurring not only in front of the annual ASCO (The American Society of Clinical Oncology) conference which begins tomorrow, spilling over into next week, but also with the monthly chart bull flag we looked at a while ago, updated below. 

Indeed, the XBI names are a major component of the bull thesis going forward, even if the larger cap bios in the IBB continue to have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time (See: CELG, REGN, among others). 

Bulls will also note the likes of FB surging today. And while that is certainly true, we do not necessarily want to see a market where the only action for longs is in crowding into the "FANG" types of names.

Hence, we must ASCO what our biotechs can for this market just as much as we ask what they can do for us.