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LivestreamMenu(This is The Best Stocks in the Market , brought to you by Josh Brown and Sean Russo of Ritholtz Wealth Management.) Josh — Psst, you want to hear more about AI capex? I’m messing with you, I know you would rather watch your parents kiss than listen to another monologue about tokens and data centers and GPUs. So we’re going to skip all that today and take a look at an area of the market where traders are escaping to. New stories, new set-ups with plenty of innovation and growth. Come with me to the Land of Biotech, where the charts are pointing north and the air is fresh and clean. Today we’ve got two names from the Best Stocks in the Market list that are making meaningful highs this summer. Incyte (INCY) and Biogen (BIIB) are two of the longest-lived publicly traded biotech companies we have. Incyte was founded in 1991 and came public two years later. Biogen was formed in 1978 and has been public since 1983! Before we show you the one-year technical charts, I want you to have the context of where these stocks have come from. In the case of Incyte, it briefly eclipsed those old late 1990’s era bubble highs a decade ago and is now seeking to challenge them once again. Let me emphasize that this is a fundamentally driven comeback story. Take a look at what earnings per share has done (orange line) since the last time Incyte traded up here. This stock has earned it. Biogen is a little different. In 2024, the stock broke a decade’s worth of support and is only now on the verge of reclaiming it. That old floor of $200 is now back in play, as you can see below. Sean’s going to catch you up on these names along with our usual high-level look at the whole list. I will be back with the risk management afterward. As of Aug 3, there are 210 names on The Best Stocks in the Market list. Top sector ranking: Top industries: Top 5 best stocks by relative strength: Sector spotlight: Biotech Incyte Corp. (INCY): Sean — We have written about biotech a few times on this column, most recently in March of this year, covering AMGN and ABBV. AMGN has been a laggard since then but ABBV is 13% higher, riding a wave of biotech breakouts in the first half of the year. The thesis from March hasn’t changed much. Biotech is very much a HALO trade. Drug manufacturing requires specialized facilities, biologic infrastructure, Food and Drug Administration approvals, patent exclusivity and clinical trials — none of which can be vibe-coded. Meanwhile, AI is culling the most expensive parts of the value chain in biotech. That includes identifying targets, designing treatments and running trials more efficiently. Now to the stocks. Incyte is a $23.5 billion biopharmaceutical company focused on cancers, blood disorders and inflammatory diseases. Its flagship drug is Jakafi, a treatment for rare bone marrow disorders that has carried the company for over a decade. The knock on Incyte has been that it’s a one-drug story and management has been on a crusade to change that. Q2 earnings for INCY were reported Tuesday. Total revenue came in at $1.67 billion with adjusted EPS of $3.09, crushing the $2.12 consensus estimate. Jakafi grew 7% to $817 million, but the story here was everything else. Opzelura, its skin cream for eczema grew 24% organically, and the oncology portfolio grew 69% to $222 million, led by three newer drugs that each posted more than 60% growth. Net product sales grew about 17% organically. INCY is shredding year–over-year comps with new drugs and treatments. Management raised full year net sales guidance to $5.13 billion–$5.26 billion and is targeting $3 billion–$4 billion in non-Jakafi sales by 2030 — which would roughly replace Jakafi’s entire current run-rate before its patent expires. They also acquired Vega Therapeutics for $1.25 billion during the quarter and are sitting on $3 billion in cash for other possible purchases. The stock jumped over 10% to a 52-week high on the print, which is notable. When an overwhelming number of buyers flood the stock with demand around meaningful reports, the market is telling us something. Josh — INCY is a textbook case of working off an overbought price spike. The results were outstanding, a rush of buying came in, then some profit-taking. Happens all the time. If INCY can clean up the profit-takers and remain in its intermediate uptrend, you can remain long the stock. Simple as that. The stock has been in a clean climb all year, working its way from the low $70s to a 52-week high of $132 before the current pullback. The trend is intact. The 50-day is rising at $109, the 200-day at $101, and price is sitting comfortably above both at $119. The level to watch on the upside is $132. A close above there opens up new ground on the long-term chart. RSI is 55. After a run like this one, that is exactly where you want to see it land. The momentum indicator has reset from overbought but has not collapsed. This is what an orderly consolidation looks like versus a trend break. Nothing broken here. Traders can use $109 as their stop, where the 50-day currently sits. Ideally, we don’t want to automatically sell there but to instead observe its behavior into the weekly closing print. So I would probably do this as an alert rather than an order. There is enough cushion between there and the current price that routine volatility will not shake you out prematurely. Investors can anchor to the rising 200-day at $101, which marks the slope of the longer-term trend that has been in place all year. Below a hundred bucks and something substantial may have changed. In either case, you’ll be out. Biogen, Inc. (BIIB): Sean — Biogen is a $30 billion biotech focused on diseases of the brain and nervous system. Think multiple sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, ALS and Alzheimer’s. Similar to INCY, investors were worried its legacy MS franchise was shrinking faster than new drugs could grow. Last Wednesday’s Q2 report helped on that front with Biogen’s Growth Portfolio out-earning the legacy MS business. Revenue of $2.74 billion grew 3% year over year and beat estimates by roughly $240 million, while adjusted EPS of $3.60 came in 18% above consensus. The Growth portfolio grew 24% and the company reported that a new at-home dosing option was approved by the FDA, removing a painful friction point for Alzheimer’s patients. BIIB is also in acquisition mode. They bought Apellis which added two eye and rare-disease drugs that contributed $128 million in just six weeks of ownership and management expects it to be EPS accretive in 2027 with $250 million-plus in run-rate synergies. It is worth mentioning that deal costs around this acquisition are why GAAP earnings look ugly right now — GAAP EPS fell 85%, but the underlying business grew. Forward guidance calls for mid-single-digit revenue growth this year and non-GAAP EPS of $12–$13. Biogen also has a number of drugs in late-stage trials, so expect some volatility as those results roll in. Josh — It might be worth anticipating a breakout here. BIIB has been in a well-defined uptrend since last summer, climbing steadily off the low $120s with both the 50-day and 200-day rising underneath it the entire way. The stock ran to a 52-week high of $219 but has spent the past several weeks churning in a range, unable to clear $218 on multiple attempts. That is the level. A meaningful close above $218 and this stock is in breakout territory. RSI is 50. After a run from the low $120s to $219, that is a complete momentum reset. The indicator is back to neutral, which in the context of a rising trend with both moving averages still pointed up, reads as a pause. Healthy! Traders can use $190 as their stop, which is where the stock found support during the most recent consolidation. The 50-day is noise here, you can ignore it. Price crosses too frequently above and below for that to be read as meaningful in either direction. Investors can anchor to the rising 200-day at $183, which has defined the longer-term trend all year. On the upside, a clean move through $218 is where this trade gets interesting again. DISCLOSURES: Ritholtz own shares of INCY for clients in its Porterhouse strategy. All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, or its parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, TAX OR LEGAL ADVICE OR A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY ANY SECURITY OR OTHER FINANCIAL ASSET. THE CONTENT IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ANY INDIVIDUAL’S UNIQUE PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 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