Dear New World Investor:
NO ISSUE NEXT WEEK! You can call it summer vacation, but we call it finally moving to our Cathedral Trees Sanctuary natural burial ground.
July’s Consumer Price Index had either something for everyone or nothing for anyone, depending on your bias. The headline year-over-year number was +2.7%, the same as June and a tenth under the +2.8% expected. The month-over-month change was +0.2%, as expected. So the rate of inflation didn’t increase even with a large amount of tariffs and was below expectations – good news. But inflation stayed firmly above the Fed’s +2.0% target – bad news.
The more important core rate was +3.1% year-over-year, above June’s +2.9%, the consensus for +3.0%, and the Fed’s target – bad news. But since February, in spite of the tariffs, goods inflation is up only +0.8% – good news. But the bounce back in core inflation has been driven by sticky services price increases – bad news.
Click for larger graphic h/t DiMartinoBooth
This morning’s hotter-than-expected July Producer Price Index (PPI) rose 3.3% year-over-year, the most since February, and 0.9% from June, compared to the 0.2% expected. Wall Street immediately worried that tariffs are finally hitting wholesale prices, even though they know the link between the PPI and the Consumer Price Index is a long way from direct.
The core PPI also rose 3.3% year-over-year, the most since February. What really caught The Street’s eye was the 0.6% increase from June, the biggest monthly jump since March 2022 – over three years.
Click for larger graphic h/t Yahoo Finance
The Bottom Line: This certainly doesn’t close the door on a September rate cut, but the opening is a little smaller than it was a couple of days ago. The CME FedWatch tool had a 99.9% probability of a 25 basis point (¼ percentage point) Fed funds rate cut at the September 17 meeting before the PPI announcement. That has fallen to 92.1%. Unless the labor market suddenly strengthens, a ¼ point cut probably is the right direction to bet, although I’d be more around 65% probability. Before the September Fed meeting we get new claims for unemployment every Thursday (a small drop to 224,000 today), the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index on August 29, August payrolls on September 5, and another CPI on September 11. So there’s plenty of data coming to change that FedWatch probability.
JPMorgan pointed out that “there is more than $7 trillion in money market funds, suggesting plenty of dry powder to buy stocks, especially if we do see the Fed cut rates, dropping the return on money market fund assets.” A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Click for larger graphic h/t St. Louis Fed
Market Outlook
The S&P 500 added 2.0% since last Thursday, squeaking out a new all-time closing high today and a decisive intraday high yesterday. The Index is up 10.0% year-to-date. The Nasdaq Composite gained 2.2%, including new intraday and closing highs yesterday. It is up 12.4% for the year. The SPDR S&P Biotech Exchange-Traded Fund (XBI) climbed 5.0% as biotech caught a bid. It’s still down 0.5% year-to-date, though. The small-cap Russell 2000 clocked +3.8%, bringing it to a positive +3.1% in 2025.
Analyzing last week’s fractal dimension, I wrote: “ I’d like to see another big earnings-driven up candle next week to lock this in…” The market gods must have been listening. This is a full-blown uptrend, and when Wall Street comes back from the Hamptons after Labor Day weekend, I suspect the question will be: “How quickly can you get me invested?”
Click for larger graphic
Top 5
Changes this week: None
Near-Term – chronological order
AKBA Akebia Therapeutics – Vafseo launch – good Canaccord presentation this week
SCYX ScyNexis – Resolution of GSK situation – sounding closer; see below
EQT EQT – natural gas price rebound
USL United States 12 Month Oil Fund, LP – crude should rise quickly
FCX Freeport McMoRan – copper shortage
Long-Term – alphabetical order
ABCL AbCelllera – Will become a huge pharma royalty company
UUUU Energy Focus – Domestic uranium supplier
EQT EQT – largest US natural gas company
IBIT iShares Bitcoin Trust – Bitcoin is headed for $150,000
META Meta – a (the?) leader in the metaverse
PLTR Palantir – a (the?) leader in AI applications software
SCYX ScyNexis –First new antifungal in 20 years
Coming Events
All times below are ET, and most presentations and slides are archived on the companies’ websites so you can listen to them.
Monday, August 18
AKBA – Akebia Therapeutics – DaVita 90-day pilot program begins
Thursday, August 21
NO ISSUE THIS WEEK!
Friday, August 22
Fed Chairman Powell speech at Jackson Hole – Around 1:00pm
Tuesday, August 26
Short Interest – After the close
Wednesday, August 27
NVDA – Nvidia – 5:00pm – Earnings conference call
Thursday, August 28
June quarter GDP – 8:30am – Second estimate
On – Onsemi – 1:15pm – Deutsche Bank Technology Conference
Friday, August 29
Personal Consumption Expenditures Index – 8:30am
Big Tech: The Biotech & Digital Dominators MegaShift
There are at least four ways to make money in the stocks of these large, growing, dominant companies. You can:
* * Buy a stock and hold it
* * Buy a stock and write a call option against it
* * With a Level IV options account, write an out-of-the-money put option
* * With a Level IV options account, write an out-of-the-money put option and use part of the premium to buy an out-of-the-money call option
Micron (MU – $125.29) jumped $16.51 or 15.2% this week after they substantially increased their July fourth quarter guidance before the Keybank Technology Leadership Forum on Monday. Wall Street was at $10.74 billion in revenues and $2.52 earnings per share.
Revenue guidance went from $10.7 billion ±$300 million to $11.2 billion ±$100 million. The pro forma gross profit margin was raised from from 42.0% ±1.0% to 44.5% ±0.5%. Earnings guidance was increased from $2.50 ±15¢ to $2.85 ±7¢. They said the revised guidance reflects improved pricing, particularly in DRAM, and strong execution.
At the Keybank conference (AUDIO HERE and TRANSCRIPT HERE), EVP and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana said their DRAM volumes were as expected but pricing was stronger and they are selling a higher percentage of high-value AI memory products. The see AI demand continuing to grow for many years as we progress from Artificial Intelligence to Artificial General Intelligence equal to the human brain to Artificial Super-Intelligence. Customers want to design proprietary features into their future AI memory, which means – this is a big deal – memory will go from commodity pricing to value-added semiconductor pricing. And, of course, the number of suppliers will drop from many to one or two. I am raising the Micron buy limit to $125 and the target price to $200.
Nvidia (NVDA – $182.02) stalled as Reuters reported that Chinese state media says Nvidia H20 chips not safe for China. A social media post said the H20 chips pose security concerns after Beijing raised concerns over backdoor access in those chips. They also said the H20 chips are also not technologically advanced or environmentally friendly: “When a type of chip is neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe, as consumers, we certainly have the option not to buy it.”
Yes, indeed “we” do. What’s more important is what happens to “we” if we do buy it. 20 years in a “reeducation” facility that supports itself by selling human organs to the West? But I digress. This is simply China putting pressure on President Trump to loosen the US semiconductor export restrictions to allow the export of more powerful AI processors.
Nvidia, of course, reassured the Chinese government that there are no backdoors in the H20 – not that anything will change the game. Fortunately, right now China needs Nvidia more than Nvidia needs China to put up big growth numbers for at least a few more quarters. NVDA is a Hold for a $180 first target (which it just hit).
Onsemi (ON – $51.62) CEO Hassane El-Khoury and CFO Thad Trent also presented at the Keybank Technology Leadership Forum (AUDIO HERE and TRANSCRIPT HERE). Hassane said again that he’s finally seeing clear signs of stabilization with recovery coming next. Customers have low inventories and when they see those starting to rebuild they will call a recovery.
Outside the US, Chinese EVs drive the auto market – Australia, Africa, South America, even Europe. ON has a good market share in Chinese EV manufacturers. Their AI data center business just doubled for the second quarter in a row. As the racks get over 100 kilowatts, everyone is talking about 800 volt systems like it’s something new. Onsemi has been doing 800 volt systems in EVs for years.
Click for larger graphic
ON is a Buy under $60 for a $100 first target.
Palantir (PLTR – $181.02) announced a multi-year expansion of their partnership with SOMPO Holdings. Since 2020, SOMPO has been using Foundry across care facilities in Japan to support the care of senior citizens, report care to the government, meet the urgent needs of patients, and to revamp its claims process end to end. Foundry is deeply embedded at every stage across key decisions, from fraud detection and claim triage to ongoing monitoring, with thousands of daily users.
Their press release started: “Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: PLTR), a leading provider of enterprise operating systems…” And there it is. The enterprise operating system, traditionally from SAP or Oracle, is the most crucial piece of software in any company. Palantir is now one of the top 25 most valuable companies in the world because a lot of investors are finally figuring out that Palantir is the real deal. No one is increasing productivity by “leveraging technology” better than PLTR:
Click for larger graphic h/t DiMartino Booth
PLTR is a Hold for a $180 first target (which it also just hit).
Small Tech
Enovix (ENVX – $10.50) appointed Dan McCranie to its Board of Directors. I normally don’t comment on Board appointments because they normally don’t make much difference. It’s usually a cushy perk for people with the right resume to pick up some easy bucks to supplement their retirement.
But I’ve followed Dan for decades, and he is the real deal – Chairman of the Board of onsemi, Non-Executive Chairman of Freescale Semiconductor, and held chairman and director roles at 10 technology companies including Cadence, Virage Logic, Actel, Xicor, California Micro Devices, Mentor Graphics, and Cypress Semiconductor. Someone this strong joining Enovix at this point in time tells you a lot. ENVX is a Buy up to $20 for a 4-year hold to $100+ as their BrakeFlow lithium-ion battery takes market share.
Primary Risk: A new competitor invents a better battery.
Fastly (FSLY – $6.91) head of investor relations Vernon Essi presented at the Keybank Technology Leadership Forum (AUDIO HERE and TRANSCRIPT HERE). Vern said because they have a modern software architecture, they tend to win applications that are digital-native, like booking airline tickets online. Akamai has more of a legacy software architecture and focuses on older companies.
Vern said they will continue to increase their security offerings. They’re also putting more emphasis on Europe and other international. FSLY is a Buy under $10 for a 3- to 5-year hold to $50+.
Primary Risk:Content and applications delivery networks are a competitive area.
QuickLogic (QUIK – $6.53) reported a mild double miss. Revenues fell 9.8% from last year to $3.7 million. They were expected to be down about 2.5% to $4.0 million due to Samsung’s delayed product introduction. New product revenue fell 22.1% from the March quarter. The pro forma loss of 9¢ a share was 2¢ worse than the 7¢ loss estimate.
On the conference call (AUDIO HERE and TRANSCRIPT HERE), CEO Brian Faith said they signed a new, revenue-generating eFPGA hard IP License contract for a customer’s Intel 18A test chip. Also, they won a feasibility contract for a very high-density eFPGA IP core. Brian said: “With our growing success in customer designs targeting advanced fabrication nodes, which include 12nm [nanometer] at GlobalFoundries and TSMC, and Intel 18A, we are seeing increasing interest in high density designs.”
In the December quarter they will release Australis 2.0 with major improvements for their proprietary IP Generation tool. Brian said he accelerated the introduction schedule to incorporate many new features driven by customer requirements and existing revenue-generating contracts. QUIK is a Buy up to $10 for my $40 target as their earnings repeatedly surprise Wall Street.
Primary Risk: Customers’ product introductions and associated royalties are unpredictable.
Biotech MegaShift
If you can afford it – and it would not be too big a position in your portfolio – putting $2,000 into each of these speculative biotechs might be a good way to start. Buying these out-of-favor, fallen, or forgotten companies that can get important products through the FDA at very low market capitalizations seems like a good strategy to me.
Risks
Development-stage biotechs are subject to investor sentiment swings from wildly optimistic to excessively pessimistic – mostly the latter recently. After the Primary Risk for each company, I’ve added the clinical stage of their lead product, the probable time of their first FDA approval, and the probable time of their next financing.
As always, you need to think about an appropriate position size. You could buy a full position upfront and then just hold on, or buy some upfront and leave room to add more on the inevitable financings, transient clinical trial setbacks, and the like.
Akebia Therapeutics (AKBA- $3.29) presented at the Canaccord Genuity Growth Conference (VIDEO HERE) a week after reporting Vafseo results that are ramping slower than the fast money wanted to see. CEO John Butler said that although revenue from Vafseo grew from ~$12 million in the March quarter (which included inventory stocking) to ~$13 million in the June quarter, end user demand grew about 55% from $8 million to north of $12 million.
They did that with prescribing access to only about 40,000 of the 550,000 dialysis patients, 500,000 of whom are on ESAs (erythropoiesis-stimulating agents) for their anemia. They’ll get access to another 30,000 patients by the end of this quarter. By the end of November, when the DaVita pilot program that starts next Monday ends, they will be up to 275,000 patients.
Dialysis centers save $16 a session that they’ve been paying for ESAs and get $98 reimbursed for Vafseo at the listed Wholesale Acquisition Cost (that no one pays).
Akebia just reported June quarter sales of $62.47 million. Wall Street expects sales of only $48.7 million in the current quarter and $48.53 million in the December quarter, which seems too low even if an Auryxia generic is approved (none has been so far). The non-dialysis Phase 3 trial will be a 1,500-patient study and start by the end of the year. Buy AKBA up to $4 for the Vafseo launches in the EU, UK, and US. I think GSK and/or Amgen will make a bid for the company.
Primary Risk: Vafseo doesn’t sell in the US.
Clinical stage of lead product: Approved
Probable time of next approval: 2026
Probable time of next financing: Never
Compass Pathways (CMPS – $4.24) also presented at the Canaccord Growth Conference (AUDIO HERE). Chief Patient Officer Dr. Steve Levine said the Trump Administration seems more supportive of psychedelics for selected indications if they can meet current FDA standards. Management and I believe Compass is the only company executing clinical trials acceptable to the FDA. Big Pharma is doing some work but doesn’t have anything special in trials. Compass believes they can handle US distribution, but probably will partner the rest of the world.
Next Up: There are 14 million adults living with PTSD and there hasn’t been a new drug for 20 years. They are finalizing the design of a late-stage trial of COMP60 – details to come. CMPS is a Buy under $10 for a very long-term hold to $200.
Primary Risk: Their drugs fail in the clinic.
Clinical stage of lead product: Phase 3
Probable time of first FDA approval: 2028
Probable time of next financing: Late 2025
Editas Medicine (EDIT – $2.96) reported a June quarter GAAP loss of $53.2 million or 63¢ a share, much bigger than the 38¢ loss estimate. But that included $26.1 million or 31¢ a share in one-time restructuring charges related to the discontinuance of the reni-cell program, so the operating loss was 32¢ compared to the 38¢ loss estimate.
Thanks to the restructuring, R&D expenses decreased by $38.0 million from $54.2 million in last year’s June quarter to $16.2 million this year. General and administrative expenses fell by $5.3 million from $18.2 to $12.9 million.
CEO Gilmore O’Neill said: “We made good progress in executing our strategy in the second quarter, driving towards our goal of nominating our first in vivo development candidate, which we plan to select in September. We are on track to file an IND for our lead program by mid-2026 and achieve human proof-of-concept by the end of 2026. In addition, we announced new proof-of-concept preclinical data for our in vivo programs during the second quarter, which we believe support the potential of our LNP platform and differentiated upregulation strategy to transform the future of disease treatment through gene editing.”
They finished the quarter with $178.5 million in cash, enough to carry them for almost two years into the June 2927 quarter. EDIT is a Buy under $6 for a double in 12 months and a long-term hold to much higher prices.
Primary Risk: Other companies’ gene-sequencing drugs fail in the clinic.
Clinical stage of lead product: Partnered: Approved. Owned: Going into the clinic mid-2025.
Probable time of next FDA approval: 2028
Probable time of next financing: Late 2026 or never
Inovio (INO – $1.62) reported a June quarter GAAP loss of $23.5 million or 61¢ per share, down from $1.19 per share last year and in line with analyst estimates. Operating expenses dropped from $33.3 million in the second quarter of 2024 to $23.1 million this quarter, a 31% decrease.
On the conference call (AUDIO HERE and TRANSCRIPT HERE), CEO Jacqueline Shea said they have completed the design verification testing of their CELLECTRA 5PSP device, which allows them to move forward with the next key regulatory milestones for this program: submitting the BLA for INO-3107 in the second half of the year, expecting file acceptance by year-end. She emphasized the company’s request for a rolling BLA submission and added: “We plan to request a priority review of our BLA, which, if accepted, would provide a 6-month review of the file, potentially providing for a PDUFA date around the middle of 2026.”
Chief Medical Officer Michael Sumner said that there’s been no indication that IINO-3107 will require an Advisory Committee meeting and the chances of that are relatively low. He also said: “We’re definitely going to move forward with a redosing strategy, most likely something relatively simple, such as annual dosing.”
Steven Egge, Chief Commercial Officer, discussed market research indicating both patients and providers find 3107’s efficacy, tolerability, and treatment simplicity compelling. Egge detailed their progress in distribution and channel strategy. They signed a contract with a third-party logistics provider and are in the process of negotiating contracts with their specialty pharmacy, specialty distributor, and patient hub partners.
Only a very small, cost-efficient commercial organization is needed to promote INO-3107 to the 300 to 400 laryngologists. He said they probably will price it around $360,000 a year.
Inovio had $47.5 million in cash at the end of June and picked up another $22.5 million from the July stock sale. They expect to burn about $22 million in the September quarter. In total, their cash can carry them into the June 2026 quarter, about when INO-3107 will be approved. INO is a Buy under $5 for a very long-term hold.
Primary Risk: Their drugs fail in the clinic.
Clinical stage of lead product: Phase 3
Probable time of first FDA approval: Early 2026
Probable time of next financing:After FDA approval in 2026
ScyNexis (SCYX – $0.80) reported a 14¢ GAAP loss in the June quarter, considerably less than the -19¢ expected due to a 4.4¢ non-cash warrant liability adjustment. CEO David Angulo said: “We also continue to work towards resolving our dispute with GSK as it relates to the payment of the milestones associated with the restart [$10 million] and continuation of the MARIO study [$20 million due on November 28]. As these discussions continue, GSK has emphasized that it remains committed to the commercialization of Brexafemme in vulvovaginal candidiasis. Per GSK’s request, we have initiated transfer of the New Drug Application for Brexafemme to them which will enable GSK to initiate regulatory interactions to discuss the relaunch of the product.”
That is WIERD. The hospital indications for ibrexafungerp, especially the MARIO step-down trial moving invasive candidiasis patients from IV azoles to oral ibrexafungerp always seemed like cash cows to me. I think Brexafemme will be successful, but it probably takes a huge marketing effort. Yet GSK wants to pursue Brexafemme but not the hospital indications?
ScyNexis said they are working to transfer the Brexafemme NDA to GSK by the end of 2025. Once this transfer has been completed, GSK will be able to initiate regulatory interactions with the FDA in 2026 to discuss the relaunch of Brexa for vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC – yeast infections) and refractory vulvovaginal candidiasis (rVVC) in the US.
Meanwhile, we’ll see the Phase 1 single ascending dose/multiple ascending dose data for SCY-247 in this quarter. It should be extremely good.
The company ended the quarter with $46.5 million in cash, enough to carry them into the December 2026 quarter even without the GSK milestones. Buy SCYX under $2.50 for a first target price of $20 after ibrexafungerp is approved for hospital use and a buyout at $50.
Primary Risk: Ibrexafungerp fails to sell.
Clinical stage of lead product: Approved
Probable time of next FDA approval: 2026
Probable time of next financing: Never
Inflation MegaShift
Gold ($3,380.20) fluctuated with the cold-then-hot inflation data after setting an all-time high at $3,477 last Friday. Last week I wrote: “The fractal dimension is about to drop back through 55, signaling that new trend has started – and I’m going to need a bigger graphic. Again.”
The gold market gods also were listening, but they have a mischievous streak, so – nope. The fractal dimension flattened just above 55 as if to say: “I’ll decide when you need a new chart, buddy.”
Click for larger graphic
Miners & Related
Sandstorm Gold (SAND – $10.48) reported last Thursday. As I said in last week’s issue, June quarter revenues rose 24.2% from last year to a record $51.4 million, just under the $51.48 million consensus estimate. Cash flows from operations hit $37.7 million, supported by record cash operating margins of $2,981 per gold equivalent ounce.
On Friday’s conference call (AUDIO HERE and TRANSCRIPT HERE), CEO Nolan Watson said they had over $36 million in cash flow in the quarter. Royal Gold will file a preliminary proxy statement shortly and both companies have had a positive response from major shareholders. Both companies will hold a shareholder vote and the acquisition should close in the middle or end of the December quarter.
The rap on Royal Gold always has been that it’s not as diversified as industry leaders Franco Nevada and Wheaton Precious Metals. As you can see in the graphic below on the right-hand side, its top 5 assets account for 79% of its net asset value. The comparable value for Franco Nevada is 60%, and for Wheaton is 73%. After the merger, as you can see on the left-hand side, RGLD will only have 61% of its assets in the top 5 – similar to Franco Nevada and less than Wheaton. That should drive a multiple upgrade.
Click for larger graphic
Royal Gold will be very diversified:
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SAND is a Hold for the Royal Gold acquisition.
Primary Risk: Prices of precious metals fall due to US dollar strength.
Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are a diversifying asset that offer a unique opportunity to make (or lose!) a lot of money quickly.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD on Yahoo – $118,236.25) rose to an all-time high of $123,500 after Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates – the largest and one of the most successful hedge funds in the world – recommended a 15% allocation to gold or bitcoin to hedge against growing government debt. Dalio has made billions identifying major macro trends before they go mainstream, and even just one year ago, this would have never come out of an “old school” Wall Street guy’s mouth. Owning crypto is becoming the norm, even for Wall Street, which resisted it for years.
Bitcoin fell more than 3% from its record highs on Thursday after the hotter-than-expected inflation data, but also because Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent signaled the US won’t be purchasing bitcoin for its strategic reserve. He said US reserves of bitcoin amount to around $15 billion or $20 billion at today’s prices, and: “We’ve also started to get into the 21st century — a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. We’re not going to be buying that, but we are going to use confiscated assets and continue to build that up.”
I like the idea of no more government sales of confiscated bitcoin, which have temporarily depressed the price in the past. I’m for anything that reduces the huge downdrafts, or as @TechDev_52 wrote: “If I put $100 in Bitcoin in 2010 I’d have $2.8B now.”
“No. If you bought $100 of Bitcoin in 2010 and watched it go to: $1,000 → $100,000 → $1.7 million and did nothing.
“Then watched $1.7 million go to $170,000 and still did nothing.
“Then watched $170,000 go to $110 million and still did nothing.
“Then watched $110 million wither to $18 million and still did nothing.
“Then watched $18 million surge to $390 million and still did nothing.
“Then watched $390 million deteriorate to $85 million and still did nothing.
“Then watched $85 million climb to $1.6 billion and still did nothing.
“Then watched $1.6 billion shrink to $390 million and still did nothing.
“Then watched $390 million surge to $2.8 billion and then for some reason finally decided to do something…Then, yes, $100 in 2010 would be worth $2.8 billion today.”
Click for larger graphic
BTC-USD, ETH-USD, IBIT, and ETHA are Strong Buys.
Primary Risk: Bitcoin falls due to over-regulation or is surpassed by another cryptocurrency.
iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT- $67.03) remains the cheapest and easiest way to buy bitcoin. IBIT is a Buy for the 2028, 2032, and 2036 halvings.
Primary Risk:Bitcoin falls due to over-regulation or is surpassed by another cryptocurrency.
Ethereum (ETH-USD on Yahoo – $4,560.34) has finally cleared $4,000. It could surge to my $10,000 target in a hurry. ETH-USD is a Buy.
Primary Risk: Bitcoin extensions outperform Ethereum.
iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA- $34.37) remains the cheapest and easiest way to buy ethereum. ETHA is a Buy for the coming explosion in token-funded start-ups.
Primary Risk: Ethereum falls due to over-regulation or is surpassed by another cryptocurrency.
Commodities
Oil – $63.96
Oil barely fluctuated this week, giving up a few pennies on the low CPI and rising a few pennies on the high PPI.
The July 2026 Crude Oil Futures (CLN26.NYM – $61.52) are a Buy under $70 for a $200+ target. Only buy futures for all cash; do not use margin.
The United States 12 Month Oil Fund, LP (USL – $35.60) is a Buy under $40 for a $100+ target.
Vermilion Energy (VET – $7.32) reported June quarter results last Friday. They reported a per share GAAP loss of C$1.51, but that consisted of net earnings of C48¢ per share from continuing operations and a net loss of C$1.99 per share from discontinued operations, reflecting a non-cash adjustment to the book value of the Saskatchewan and United States assets held for sale. They generated C$260 million (C$1.68 per share) of fund flows from operations (FFO), compared to C$256 million (C$1.66 per share) in the March quarter.
On the conference call (AUDIO HERE and SLIDES HERE and TRANSCRIPT HERE), management said net debt decreased from $2.1 billion at the end of March to $1.4 billion at June 30. The company returned $26 million to shareholders through $20 million in dividends and $6 million of buying back 700,000 shares of stock.
Production averaged 136,002 barrels of oil equivalent per day, comprised of 63% natural gas and 37% crude oil and liquids. They expect September quarter production to average between 117,000 to 120,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, 67% natural gas, reflecting the July closing dates of the Saskatchewan and United States asset divestments, planned seasonal turnarounds, and shut-in gas due to low summer prices. They’ll pump more gas in the fall at higher prices.
Click for larger graphic
VET is a buy under $11 for a target price of $24 or more.
Primary Risk: Oil prices fall.
* * * * *
Make Something Wonderful is 250 pages of Steve Jobs in his own words, speaking directly to you. This free book contains some of Steve’s ideas never found anywhere else. Notes from the book:
1. He didn’t care about being right. He cared about being excellent.
2. His mind was never a captive of reality.
3. He said working with great people gives you access to wisdom that you can’t buy for love or money.
4. He believed technology should be streamlined and practical, simple and sophisticated, and that it should be a tool for enhancing creativity as much as productivity.
5. He believed you should ambush your customers. Meet them where they are.
6. His ideas were not arguments, but intuitions. He had a true inner freedom and an epic sense of possibility.
7. He gave an extraordinary amount of thought to how best to use our fleeting time.
8. By the time he was thirty he was the public face of a Fortune 500 company.
9. At Apple’s first board meeting he put his bare feet on a conference room table.
10. He said you should think of your life as a rainbow arching across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.
11. He possessed unbelievable rigor that he imposed first, and most strenuously, on himself.
12. He saw clearly (1) what was not there, (2) what could be there, (3) what had to be there.
13. He said early Apple employees were more like poets and painters than cold technologists. That the passion they put into their products were completely indistinguishable from other creative fields. He said their work was a form of love.
14. He had a verbal mastery that was obvious at a young age. He used simple, descriptive language, told stories, and repeated lines and ideas that were important.
15. He thought it was inevitable that computers would be the dominant medium of human communication. He said this in 1983.
16. He had a talent for spotting markets full of second-rate products.
17. He said you could tell how important a product was based on the amount of time people spent interacting with it. As a result he thought it was inevitable that more design talent would shift from the automobile (1 or 2 hours a day) to computers (6+ hours a day). He said this in the 80s.
18. He said that books kept him out of jail and that it’s a shame there are so many mediocre teachers.
19. Like many great entrepreneurs before him, Steve knew what he wanted to do, but didn’t know how to do it yet. He said he wanted to make an insanely great computer that was the size of a book. What he described sounded a lot like an iPad. He said this in the 80s.
20. He believed that you should use your unique set of talents to make things that make the lives of other people better. Most people just take. He said “the ability to put something back into the pool of human experience is extremely neat.”
21. He would tell his team “You work for Apple first and your boss second.” He felt strongly about that.
22. He was constantly placing the products he was making in a historical perspective, like comparing the Macintosh to the invention of the telephone.
23. He believed you needed to give yourself more time to make mistakes. He said his taste got more refined as he made mistakes. He said that making mistakes over a long period of time made his aesthetics better.
24. He said the key ingredient to making something great was time.
25. He said he wanted to spend his life building things. He could have retired to a beach in his 20s and thought that was disgusting.
26. He was interested in learning how to hone a company down to its essence.
27. You read this book and a thought jumps out at you: How many people are willing to go through a decade of failure without quitting? Steve had the capacity to take pain.
28. He believed it was better to focus on what you’re actually passionate about, instead of what you think will make you the most money. He made the most money that way.
29. He listened to older, wiser entrepreneurs and let them shape and mold his thinking.
30. He wasn’t afraid to fail, but had to coach himself to adopt that trait. He didn’t want to fail, but he wasn’t afraid of it.
31. He said don’t let your differentiation evaporate.
32. He said if you let your differentiation evaporate the only solution is innovation.
33. He believed great ideas don’t map onto corporate hierarchy.
34. He was incapable of thinking that his work and his life were different, separate things.
35. He said the most important things in life are not the goal-oriented, materialistic things. He said you should tap into the world’s magical, mystical, and artistic sides.
36. He paid attention to subtle insights. He was guided by intuition.
37. He didn’t believe in the concept or a career, or think it was wise to follow well-worn paths laid out by others.
38. He said most people make the mistake of not thinking about death. He said: “For me it’s the opposite: to know my arc will fall, makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky.”
39. He thought Walt Disney had a great idea: Edit before you make it.
40. He said no amount of technology can turn a bad story into a good story.
41. He believed storytellers were the most powerful people in the world.
42. He believed if you didn’t have great people you were doomed.
43. He found great people by looking at great results and finding out who was responsible for them.
44. This is how he interviewed people: “In an interview I will purposely upset someone: I’ll criticize their prior work. I’ll do my homework, find out what they worked on and say, “God, that really turned out to be a bomb. That really turned out to be a bozo product. Why did you work on that?” The worst thing that someone can do in an interview is to agree with me and knuckle under. What I look for is for someone to come right back and say, “You’re dead wrong and here’s why.”
45. He believed the job of the leader was to make sure the work is as good as it should be, and to get people to stretch beyond their best.
46. He believed the job of the leader was to cajole, and beg, and plead, and threaten at times—to do whatever is necessary to get people to see things in a bigger and more profound way and to have them do better work than they thought they could do.
47. He believed the priorities of the leader were (1) recruit, (2) set an overall direction, and (3) inspire and cajole and persuade.
48. He believed a creative company should have a risk-taking, creative environment on the product side and a fiscally conservative environment on the business side.
49. He believed you have to choose what you put your love into really carefully.
50. He had a remarkably consistent set of values that he held dear: Life is short; don’t waste it. Tell the truth. Technology should enhance human creativity. Process matters. Beauty matters. Details matter. The world we know is a human creation—and we can push it forward.
51. He thought when deciding what to work on that you should ask yourself: “What do I give a shit about?” And then go do that.
52. He would never sell Apple. Not for all the money in the world.
53. He believed you should master the basics, simplify the product line, and focus on the gems.
54. He believed marketing was about values. That the world is noisy and you should focus on telling customers what you believe in and what you stand for.
55. He believed one way to invest in yourself is by exploring uncharted paths that are different from your past experiences. You know it’s an uncharted path when you have no idea where it will lead.
56. He believed that people that think they’re following a safe path pay the highest price of all. They won’t realize it for a decade or two — and by then it’s too late.
57. He didn’t believe in resting on laurels or sleeping on wins. Make something great. Then do it again.
58. He imagined what reality lacked and set out to remedy it.
59. He believed in straight forward, clear communication. If the work isn’t good enough you have to tell them straight: “This isn’t good enough. I know you can do better. You need to do better. Now go do better.”
60. He remained driven by a mission to “put something back into the pool of human experience.”
61. He believed in the basics: great product, great marketing, great distribution.
62. He believed you must keep up with innovations in distribution.
63. He believed brands take decades to build.
64. He would capture the evolution of his own thinking by emailing himself.
65. He viewed Apple has the world’s premier bridge builder between normal people and the exploding world of high technology.
66. He wanted to demystify technology.
67. He believed excellence was a habit and we are what we repeatedly do.
68. He believed you should be curious about what came before you and you should spend time to learn about it.
69. He believed you simply could not mix messages when selling something new. A customer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone several.
70. He said it’s a circus world and you’ll never know what’s around the next corner.
71. He believed in management by values. Which means (1) find people that want the same things you want and (2) figure out the best way to get those things along the way.
72. He believed in the mantra: Finding the right people is half the battle.
73. He said you can’t plan to meet the people who will change your life.
74. He believed everything is temporary — there is no such thing as safety.
75. He believed that your life is a story and that you should remember that your life is a story and that you should always act like your life is a story.
76. He believed in rejecting dogma, which he defined as living with the results of other people’s thinking. He said that dogma can be so loud that it can drown out your own inner voice and you should avoid this.
77. He believed a great place to start was by improving a product you hate. If you can make something you love, you can convince other people to love it too.
78. He said all glory is fleeting and you should just get back to making something wonderful.
h/t @FoundersPodcast
* * * * *
Your reading The Forgotten Side of Medicine Editor,
Michael Murphy CFA
Founding Editor
New World Investor
All Recommendations
Priced 08/14/25. Check out the complete Portfolio page HERE.
Buys
These are the stocks everyone needs to own because transformative events are happening over the next year or two, and I expect to hold them long-term.
Tech Dominators
Apple Computer (AAPL – $232.78) – Buy under $205
Gilead Sciences (GILD – $119.02) – Buy under $115, first target price $150
Meta (META – $782.13) – Buy under $705 for a long-term hold
Micron Technology (MU – $125.29) – Buy under $125, target price $200
Onsemi (ON – $51.62) – Buy under $60, first target price $100
PayPal (PYPL – $69.38) – Buy under $75, target price $150
Snap (SNAP – $7.08) – Buy under $11, target price $17+
SoftBank (SFTBY – $52.29) – Buy under $35, target price $50+
Small Tech
Enovix (ENVX – $10.50) – Buy under $20; 4-year hold to $100+
First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR – $71.73) – Buy under $75; 3- to 5-year hold
Fastly (FSLY – $6.91) – Buy under $10 for a 3- to 5-year hold to $50+
PagerDuty (PD – $15.48) – Buy under $30; 2- to 5-year hold
QuickLogic (QUIK – $6.53) – Buy under $10, target price $40
ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX – $34.15) – Buy for SpaceX
$20-for-$1 Biotech
AbCellera Biologics (ABCL – $4.50) – Buy under $6, target $30+
Akebia Biotherapeutics (AKBA – $3.29) – Buy under $4, target $20
Compass Pathways (CMPS – $4.24) – Buy under $10, hold a long time for a 20x return
Editas Medicines (EDIT – $2.96) – Buy under $6 for a double in 12 months and a long-term hold to much higher prices
Inovio (INO – $1.62) – Buy under $5, hold a long time
Medicenna (MDNAF – $0.76) – Buy under $3, first target $20, then maybe $40
ScyNexis (SCYX – $0.80) – Buy under $2.50, target price $20, then $50
Inflation
A Short-Sale or REO House – ($415,400) – Hold
Bag of Junk Silver – ($38.02) – hold through silver bull market
Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM – $49.24) – Buy under $50, target price $75
Sprott Junior Gold Miners ETF (SGDJ – $52.40) – Buy under $60, target price $100
Sprott Physical Gold and Silver Trust (CEF – $30.98) – Buy under $35, target price $60
Global X Silver Miners ETF (SIL – $53.80) – Buy under $60, target price $100
Coeur Mining (CDE – $11.59) – Buy under $10, target price $20
First Majestic Mining (AG – $8.86) – Buy under $11, next target price $23
Paramount Gold Nevada (PZG – $0.69) – Buy under $1, first target price $10
Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin (BTC-USD – $118,236.25) – Buy
iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT – $67.03) – Buy
Ethereum (ETH-USD – $4,588.39)– Buy
iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA- $35.37) – Buy
Commodities
Crude Oil Futures – July 2026 (CLN26.NYM – $61.52) – Buy under $70; $200+ target
United States 12 Month Oil Fund, LP (USL – $35.60) – Buy under $40; $100+ target
Vermilion Energy (VET – $7.32) – Buy under $11; $24+ target
Energy Fuels (UUUU – $9.79) – Buy under $8; $30 target
EQT (EQT – $52.05) – Buy under $70; hold for much higher prices ($100+)
Freeport McMoRan (FCX – $42.28) – Buy under $50; $70 target within two years
Holds
These are holds but not sells – yet. They could get moved back to one of the buy categories if their prices drop or outlook improves, or they could become sell recommendations in the future.
Corning (GLW – $65.76) – Hold for $70
Nvidia (NVDA – $182.02) – Hold for $180 first target price
Palantir (PLTR – $181.02) – Hold for $180 first target price
TG Therapeutics (TGTX – $27.77) – Hold for buyout at $40+
Dakota Gold (DC – $3.99) – Hold for $6 target price
Sandstorm Gold (SAND – $10.48 – Hold for Royal Gold acquisition
Publisher: GwynRose LLC, 5348 Vegas Drive, Suite 868, Las Vegas, NV 89108
New World Investor does not act as a personal investment adviser or advocate the purchase or sale of any security or investment for any specific individual. The recommendations and analysis presented to members are for the exclusive use of members. Members should be aware that investment markets have inherent risks and there can be no guarantee of future profits. Likewise, past performance does not assure future results. Recommendations are subject to change at any time. Nothing in this presentation should be considered personalized investment advice. No communication to you by Michael Murphy or any of our employees or contractors should be deemed as personalized investment advice.
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seriously what is the point of this ever week? if you want to post rubbish, there’s a website call x – they allow anything.
SCYX looks promising. Anyone have an opinion on this one?
SCYX is nearly dead, looking for reincarnation in the afterlife. It was a mediocre drug for VVC, only slightly better than cheap generics. Nothing earth shaking despite the hype. If you can, read my numerous posts on this POS over the past few years. I sold out about a month ago. Its main value was as a tax loss to help offset my big gains in TGTX. I’ve accumulated huge carryover tax losses from NWI and Technology Investing stocks. Only 3 exceptions were big winners–DNDN, ARNA, TSM. I still hold TSM, a proxy for NVDA. TGTX has restored me to about breakeven from all the losers. I am looking to weed out some more junk mostly from NWI to help offset my (hopefully) future gains in CAPR, AKBA, ACHV, NGENF.
I hope someone else responds. If you hear something promising, I might have considered waiting for 30 days after my loss, but I’ve got better places to invest than SCYX, such as CAPR, AKBA, ACHV.
NGENF is now back to where it was before jumping on the good news of its results for spinal cord injury. I want to buy more in the quiet period which is now. I will appreciate Chris’s advice on how to accumulate for the long term.
CAPR is looking very promising of late, since the FDA approved several drugs for rare conditions this week on limited data. This looks like Prasad is now more open minded, which bodes well for CAPR.
AKBA may flounder until the next ER for Q3 in early Nov, but today I (viber7 on Stocktwits) gave more credence to the analysis of the ultra bull hsainu. Now $3.25, you may snag some below $3 over the next 2 months, but MM’s buy below $4 is reasonable. The shock of low Vafseo uptake in Q2 has passed, and the stock is now more stable at this level.
ACHV will get approval in 9 months for its improved version of Chantix for smoking cessation. Approval for vaping cessation will come later. It may stay stagnant for 6-9 months at $2.50, but it is near the bottom of $2. Target is $10 or much higher.
I have big positions in the latter three, with the most comfort in CAPR. There is still a possibility that the chastened Prasad approves it by the original PDUFA date of 8/31/25. If not, the HOPE 3 data will be excellent and support accelerated approval in only a few months. Look for 2-3X by then. If yes, hold for much higher fairly soon.
Thank you. Your opinion is appreciated. Like you, I look forward to hear what Chris has to say
CAPR–yesterday someone on ST showed a social media post by Eduardo Marban saying “good riddance” to Prasad when he was fired from the FDA at the end of July. Little did he know Prasad was to be re-instated 2 weeks later. EM is the brilliant researcher who discovered CDC exosomes and how it could help DMD cardiomyopathy. But he is a dummy for making that public statement. In his divorce settlement, he gave Linda Marban CAPR. It would have been a disaster if Linda had made that statement, but technically EM is not connected with the company. The issue is whether Prasad will be vindictive toward CAPR and delay approval until they run out of money in late 2026, or whether he will be professional and judge CAPR based solely on the objective HOPE 3 data with input from an Adcom and credible evidence from patients and families. If Prasad is angry and vindictive, he may be held back by threats to his life and lose his FDA job again if he again behaves unprofessionally against CAPR.
What do you think about this matter? Chris?
MM – the Dalio recommendation plus soon to be access to crypto in 401k accounts I think will blow the top off the price – do you still think ethereum outperforms bitcoin – isn’t your bitcoin price forecast too conservative now?
I think so, just because of the price difference if nothing else.(especially now) I have 3 times as much ETH as Bitcoins. Most of the gains are over the last month or so. But bitcoin has been a sweet spot too. My $1000. Stake is up over 1000 percent. I am keeping a very close stop loss (from its most recent high) if there is a black swan event and it tanks I am selling off.
John – its widely known in the financial world that if financial managers recommend and put just 5% of their clients portfolio into BTC then that demand will drive BTC over $1 mil. In addition, 20 mill of the 21 mill available supply of BTC has been mined, much faster than predicted, so the very limited supply dynamic is red hot – U wouldn’t sell or trade my BTC holdings for any other investment opportunity – way too much price pressure up.
I can see it getting there. I was late getting in.( Warren Buffet said it was worst than a Ponzi scheme ) At the time it was over $9000 and I thought that was an insane price. But look at it now! I threw some of my crazy money into it hoping to make 20 percent. Exceeds my wildest expectations!!
Well Buffet said the same about APPLE early n, then he eventually bought it – he’s just too old school (railroads and banks) and unable to see the future
Charlie Munger was the genius behind Buffet who told him to stop buying cheap junk and focus on great capital-efficient businesses like GEICO and Coke. In the last 10-15 years, though, Buffet started buying heavy capital users like railroads and his performance suffered.
Did you know that, except for one stock, GEICO, Ben Graham’s portfolio underperformed the market? Told to me by Sid Cottle, who edited the last few volumes of Graham’s books.
My forecast is too low long-term, but in this cycle I think it can get to $150,000. The next halving is in 2028, and there probably will be the usual big drop before them. Most people won’t be able to hold through it. I’ll try to do what I did last time – sell near the top of the cycle, probably too early, and recommend buying near the bottom, probably too early.
I do think ethereum will continue to outperform bitcoin because the next few years are going to see a huge number of businesses built on the ethereum blockchain. Solana, too. Not Cardano, though.
MM What’s your thoughts on World Liberty Financial (WFLI)? It will become tradable in the next few weeks.
I agree on Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL). Many sources also recommend Cardano (ADA). Why don’t you think Cardano will outperform Bitcoin (BTC) ?
Great RR Michael. Thanks for the information and quotes from Steve Jobs. Good stuff.
I liked all of that as well. Very insightful about the life of Steve Jobs. Now I know why Apple grew so much so fast. It’s regrettable that he didn’t live longer than he did.
Geniuses do more in a short lifespan than most of us do in a long lifespan. The great classical music composers, Schubert, Mozart, Mendelssohn lived only to 31, 35, 38 respectively. Beethoven only 57. There are a few good composers of today, but in 500 years they will be forgotten, and those great composers will be remembered and still played and heard.
Really? I didn’t know that. That’s unfortunate because if you subtract the 1/3 of their lives that they were sleeping that means Schubert only lived 20 years. And Mozart only 24!! If the average Joe lives to be 80, he slept 26 years and only lived 54! It brings real meaning to the phrase , life is short!!
10. He said you should think of your life as a rainbow arching across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.
I sent that one to my kids.
Longer sleep is money in the bank. If you can get 8 hours of good sleep instead of 5, you are awake 16 hours vs 19, but you will be much more productive and enjoy your life much more.
I read the whole book this weekend. Highly recommended.
I saw some comments on a prior board that TDAPA reimbursement 1s extended for another 3 years at progressively lower rates.. That isn’t so. Oonce the 24-month TDAPA window closes, the drug stops receiving any additional TDAPA add-on payments and its cost is absorbed into the standard ESRD PPS bundle with no further carve-out reimbursement.
In the CY 2019 rule, CMS capped TDAPA for new therapies in existing functional categories at two years, reimbursing at 100% of the drug’s ASP. After those two years elapse, the bundled payment is not adjusted to reflect the drug’s costs.
Although CMS once proposed an extra three-year “incorporation adjustment” at 65% of expenditures following the initial TDAPA period, that proposal has not been finalized. As a result, no further TDAPA payments are available beyond the original two-year timeframe.
The 90-day DaVita program started today and will roll out to about 200 clinics. That’s huge, and then it will go to all DaVita clinics on November 18. Meantime, Akebia is working with Fresenius to establish a similar program.
I am perhaps alone in thinking John Butler has played this very well, from appealing the original CRL to delaying the launch until he had TDAPA. Vafseo prescriptions were up 55% from the March quarter to the June quarter, and that rate of growth can continue through 2026. I’m all-in and happy.
Maybe the CMS proposal for 65% extension (for 1st year, 65% X 65% = 42% for 2nd year, 65% X 65% x 65% = 27% for 3rd year) will be finalized before Jan 2027. Maybe Butler will be politically savvy enough to say to CMS, DO’s were slow to adopt V, so we need extensions. Govt goals like balanced budgets are always kicked down the road aka extended, so why not TDAPA?
ENVX….incredible…previously departed board member comes back with massive awards….shouldn’t these guys be in a cage or something?
Stock buy back if not running out of money better kick in fast or warrant expiry may not accelerate.
https://archive.fast-edgar.com/20250814/AOZ2T22CP222F2Z2222Q2MZZON8ND2OIA272/
Sold out my ETH position @ $4183.68. Macro financials worries. Market to bottom with the summer doldrums in the next week or two. Hoping to get back in other crypto at much lower prices!! Just IMO
big bet John – I don’t trade ETH or BTC, I buy and hold, long (and near I believe) term direction is up significantly. The historical crypto cycle that calls for major pullback in 2026 I believe is not so valid anymore given the wide adoption, ETF’s and pro crypto political environment – I’m speaking about BTC, ETH and SOL, not the alt coins. If you listen to Raoul Pal (ex Goldman Exec, runs the website REALVISION) his opinion, and really the consensus opinion by any of the reputable financial managers and analysts is BTC multiple X by 2030 and ETH possibly SOL outperforming BTC. You can try to trade around that but no reason to given the general direction is up. I’m willing to suffer thru pullbacks as I feel confident of the long term direction.
I don’t normally trade it either. I just think all the markets are quite frothy right now. It won’t take a lot to trigger a sell off. And unfortunately, there are many investors who have knee jerk reactions and push the sell button before common sense kicks in and they have second thoughts. I also don’t like the FED’s comments at the last meeting. He hinted at a rate cut but will he? If he finds a reason not to , the wind will be taken out of our sails. At least temporarily. I am also considering putting more funds in XLM and maybe SOL. Which are considerably less expensive.
CAPR any one have any takeaways from the type A meeting with the FDA, I understand that Linda was going t keep us informed
We are all worried on Stocktwits about sabotage from prick Prasad, who didn’t even attend the type A meeting. We won’t know the plan forward until the minutes in mid Sept. Linda is trying to deal with a corrupt FDA, and won’t say anything until she gets written info from the FDA. The damn govt is incompetent and slow moving. The meeting occurred on 8/13. All it takes is transcription which could be done in 1 day, not a month. More serious, Prasad as an oncologist knows little about DMD physiology and exosomes, and recently over-ruled the FDA experts who know about this field. As Chris pointed out, he is an arrogant SOB. An Adcom would help by allowing real experts to interact with FDA officials and hear the real world accounts of patients and their parents who have seen improvements from Deramiocel. This is a typical example of why govt is mostly bad, consisting of regulators who sabotage the work of superior, knowledgeable people. To all leftists, you better rethink how your idiotic Big Govt socialist philosophy is harming all people, including yourselves.
Yeah by Donny the Connie cutting taxes for the rich, and cutting medical care for the poor, that’s really harming “all people”…except the rich, all that matters for politicians to get the biggest donations.
Its the Democrats (Big Govt socialists in your mind) that are pushing for affordable medical care (affordable for all, not just the well-to-do). Don’t you remember all the Republican efforts to get rid of Social(ist) Security, MediCARE, cut MedicAID? Those recipients don’t matter to you, only to “Socialists”?
It’s those regulators you seem to despise who push for safe working conditions for those who do the grunt work in society. And test our food supply, and new drug candidates. So do you believe that we should get rid of Big Govmint regulators and let any company sell meds that they claim are effective?
Just because Prasad is an ahole doesn’t mean every regulator and regulation should be condemned as Socialist and therefore bad bad bad. Join an effort to get rid of that guy or get him reprimanded. And stop generalizing about Socialism, about which you appear to know very little but hate a lot. Stick to medicine where your expertise is valued.
You’re missing the big picture. The larger the organization, the more inefficient it is. The largest is Federal. Local govt is the least inefficient and bureaucratic. Local govt is more likely to listen to locals and personally know them. This also applies to large private businesses vs small businesses. There are layers of unfriendly management in large companies. The average employee is shut out and has no say even though he is closest to the action. The dirty word is POLITICS in both govt and businesses. The least politics, the better. Repubs are slightly better than Dems by this standard, and this FDA fiasco with Prasad illustrates that he was given his position as a result of politics, not by competence in medicine. But even Trump messed up by not properly qualifying him to do his job. As an avowed leftist and hater of Trump, it was a failure of Trump to have Prasad in his administration whom he hates. Even Superman makes mistakes. He can’t fight 1000 crimes happening simultaneously. Ironically, Superman originated from Nietschze (sp?). But it was consistent–N was the intellectual justification for Communism, an organization of all-knowing super intellects who could use their power to control average citizens. Citizens are indoctrinated to accept the control from “supermen” who are really corrupt political gangsters.
Until you live for decades in a country, you know nothing. In a socialist country you have to petition politely to make your case, OR you have to get politically active to force your case.
The biggest gap in your understanding is that socialism is basically STEALING from taxpayers for the benefit of a politically better connected group. Voluntary donation is by free choice and is morally superior to forced taxation aka stealing. If you continue to deny these axiomatic truths, don’t bother to discuss this subject again here.
Next axiom that must be accepted as self evident is the truth that regulators have inferior knowledge compared to the people and institutions they regulate. It is stupid and unjust for someone like Prasad to over-rule the expert work of the experts at the FDA in the field of cell biology. As a doctor, there are regulators who try to set standards on my work. They are ignorant and disruptive, and waste my and office staff’s time for compliance with THEIR arbitrary standards. Are THEY responsive to patients 24/7? HELL NO. They should shut the fuck up and get out of my life.
Socialist affordable medical care causes people to demand more “free” services (get this straight, nothing is “free”) which dilutes the quality. There is a limited amount of money available, so the more services demanded, the less time a doc has to provide care. Quality suffers. Then the regulator has the fucking gall to tell the overworked doc what care to give, what the insurance will pay for. Remember this the next time you want in-depth advice from a doc. For what he is getting paid, he will only give you 10 minutes. If you say you have another problem, he will cut you off and tell you to come back for another 10 min visit.
Dentists accepting insurance cut corners and give lower quality care than they give people like me who choose to forego dental insurance, and pay for what we want. Insurance pays for toxic mercury fillings, not for natural materials. If a patient wants natural fillings, they pay extra. Worse, the dental profession persecutes dentists who tell the truth about toxic mercury fillings and root canal procedures. Socialist politics again. Suppression of choice and other options. Do what WE say, not what you want.
You claim that everything that is wrong in your mind is socialist. (And in earlier arguments, that socialist leads to communism, which is historically false. Communism is installed by forceful overthrow of governments…look at Russia, China, etc.) Bureaucracy is not the same thing as socialist. We have a bureaucracy in the US government, which you rail against. Prasad is not in a socialist country, he’s here in the USA which is not considered socialist, although maybe you seem to believe that? Somehow blaming socialism for Prasad appears crazy.
Although we might not like what Prasad is doing, claiming he’s incompetent also seems crazy. Look at his resume: Prasad graduated summa cum laude from MSU with a major in physiology. He completed his medical degree at University of Chicago in 2009 and completed a residency in internal medicine at Northwestern University in 2012. Prasad was certified in internal medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 2012 and earned a Master’s of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in 2014. In 2015, Prasad completed a joint fellowship in oncology at the National Cancer Institute and hematology at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Your views and Prasad’s may overlap in some ways? Prasad was an early member of the Urgency of Normal, a group that in 2022 campaigned against quarantines and mask mandates in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. He spoke in support of repealing such mandates in a March 2022 interview. In 2023, Prasad showed support for the ideas of Robert Kennedy Jr.
What you (and others here) don’t like is that Prasad appears to be acting capriciously or corruptly in evaluating a company’s drug candidate. Socialism and his competence has nothing to do with it.
I won’t waste more time with you on this issue unless you acknowledge axioms. One, socialism is stealing, to be distinguished from voluntary donation. Second, freedom requires respect for property rights. Taxation and regulation violate property rights to a variable extent. I could go on about reasonable exceptions where certain entities need taxation to support them. The exceptions are necessary but must be minimized. Let’s see if you can predict what exceptions I am talking about and why, according to the basic axioms.
1) public schools
2) roadway construction and maintenance
3) water and sewer systems
Those are 3 examples of socialism that are not stealing. What else?
You forgot about airports for the private jets of the uber rich?
You’re right, another example of special interest spending for the uber rich at the expense of others. Wrong, according to the principles of keeping taxes and stealing to a minimum.
Good examples. Worst of the good is #1. I’ll explain shortly. The best is a functioning police dept. What is the difference between stealing and voluntary donation? Stealing involves the forceful taking of money and property from a person who would never voluntarily contribute to a particular cause.
Every rational person wants security and should be willing to pay for it. To protect against invading criminals, you can pay privately for 24/7 protection via bodyguards, home security systems, fences, living away from crime areas by spending more of your own money on a bigger house, etc. These things act as deterrents, but arresting an intruder and putting him in jail requires a govt police dept to initiate prosecution and punishment. Still, the police won’t arrive in time after calling 911 to disarm a criminal. The private person needs weapons to be used for defense, not for offense. Of course, guns kill in the hands of angry, uncontrolled people. I am curious about BYRNA, a nonlethal way for ordinary people to disable an attacker without killing him and facing years of legal and financial trouble applying the self defense principle.
Education is important. It is the prime responsibility of the parent to give the child a basic education in personal development and exposure to possible career paths. (There is a relatively small % of homeless kids who need other arrangements.) But the public school system is heavily leftwing biased. The wokeness under Biden was worse than I ever experienced as a child. Most conservative parents object to the leftist indoctrination forced down their kids’ throat. They home school their kids, or pay for religious schools. Forcing them to pay for public schools is stealing from them. I can compromise and say that public schools up to elementary age of 12 is OK and gives them the essentials, without political indoctrination which comes later.
Things like govt funding of the arts are wrong. As much as I love classical music and benefit by cheaper concert tickets and enabling more performers to earn a living, how about people who hate classical music or any of the arts? It is stealing from them to be taxed for things they don’t want. Add up these nonessential expenditures by govt for a myriad of other causes, and you get lots of govt waste and stealing.
In sum, to justify taxation and govt spending for any cause, it is not stealing for essential services that every sane person would agree that they need and would voluntarily agree to that, such as police. But it is wrong where many people object, because it is stealing from those people to be given to politically connected groups.
With these general principles, the taxation rate could be drastically reduced. More money would be in the hands or people and businesses that hire them instead of the govt sector. This money could buy them the things they really want.
Three exceptions that are NOT stealing!
Bonus item:
Trump demands a 10% stake from Intel in return for US gov’t funding for Intel. That means the US government has taken partial ownership of a private company….THAT is Socialism! Government ownership of the means of production!
Horrors! The Republican Party is hiding communists in their midst! 😉
Three items that are CLEARLY stealing:
Those who have money got it for a reason. They should not have to give anybody anything. That’s socialism, which leads to communism.
When Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, they were supposed to be for only the poor. Free school breakfasts are only appropriate for the poor. If these programs had been maintained at their original low levels, govt deficits and debts wouldn’t have been dangerously high as they are now. The problem is that once the “freebies” are given, everyone wants to get their freebies, rich as well as middle class. This is why progressively more socialism leads to economic failure. It is historically true over the long haul.
A 100% free market is impossible, but the relatively few that are truly disabled can be handled by private charity, with small additions by a sane govt that is fiscally responsible and doesn’t spend money demanded by politically connected special interests. Private corporations support good social programs that are truly needed. They get prestige from good will, which gets more customers from this. We could have a low tax rate of 10-20% or so by following free market principles infused with a little heart to help those in need rather than doling out much money to disgusting politically connected groups.
Yes, get the kids receiving free meals to work in the school cafeteria. Teach them some elementary free market incentives by having them pay 40% of their earnings to the school and keeping 60% for themselves. They can keep more of their earnings by not throwing food away. Encourage them to think of ways the school could avoid waste, and they could keep more and more money. That way the kids could grow up as admirable leaders of society, rather than politically oriented parasites scheming for benefits at the expense of others in a socialist system.
Either you need to have everyone take turns in the cafeteria, or you spread the message that some people are “below you” and have to clean up your mess, and others are privileged and should be served. I was a paperboy in my early teens, and my first two jobs after I turned 16 were janitor jobs. When I told people I wanted to go to MIT they thought I was stupid and deluded. Can’t blame them, I was dirty from cleaning the floors and bathrooms. My accent, language and clothes gave it away even if I wasn’t at work. Luckily, Brown University is dedicated to helping the state of RI and would take the top 1% from some large, shitty RI public schools. Going to a great University was a total game changer for me. Even though us locals could not afford to go to restaurants, weekend cultural events or Spring Break, we did get credentials that gave us a shot at becoming successful.
Kids who grew up in houses next to me ended up with felony arrests (heroin dealer, armed robbery, repeatedly beating up their father, …). I know them, they were good kids too, just made money the wrong way. I shoplifted from the time I was a paperboy until grad school, but never got caught. If I had more money for clothes etc I wouldn’t steal from stores. (Try one week living on minimum wage and see what its like.) And the employees at the stores stole from the stores. That’s how it is near the bottom of the ladder. One way or the other, its gonna cost you. Social programs and better free education, or choose more cops, prisons, courts, hospital ERs and rehab centers. Note how expensive the police, fire dept, prison, gunshot recovery and wayward youth programs are, if you don’t provide something for those from less fortunate means to begin with. Take your choice: Build more prisons, hire more cops and judges, or provide some basics to everyone. You can choose hate, police, courts and prisons. Buy guns and shoot anybody who maybe might assault you, who knocks on your door. Republicans rejoice in hate, building Alligator Alcatraz and sending minorities to Africa or El Salvador’s ECOT gang prison with no parole. It really gets you off, doesn’t it? Or it does to much of your Republican Trumpist party. Rejoice in hatred. That’s the Republican brand, as much as the John McCain/Romney/Dole decent people.
My luck wasn’t an option for the other 99% at my crummy high school, a third or half of whom deserved a better shot like me. Inequality begets inequality. We don’t all start out at the same place. Mostly, the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, generations after generations, unless you provide a base for everyone. Socialism doesn’t give you a free house, Ivy League education or Spring Break vacations. The whole idea that free food, free education and free medical care is wasteful is way overdone. Its just food, basic medical care and a decent school to learn without violence. I’m talking about Sweden, Germany, Canada and to some extent programs in the USA. When I lived in Germany, they were confused about why Americans complain about taxes. They said they don’t mind paying their taxes, as their government takes care of them, its a social contract. And you certainly can’t complain about the Germans not working hard!!
Socialism is such a vague, broad term, maybe covers everything from Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialism to Vietnam communism. Using such a broad term and condemning all of it is just plain misguided.
I won’t spend time addressing your post until you acknowledge that the essence of socialism is stealing. Your last paragraph shows that you either don’t understand the concept of stealing or that you deny what the essence of socialism really is. You gave good examples of how Trump is engaged in socialism, but you have to acknowledge the essential tool of socialism which is stealing. Re-read my response to Chris on this subject. Chris as a lawyer avoids whining and just points things out objectively. He deserved a thoughtful discussion which I gave him.
Agree that these Trump activities are wrong. I am not defending Trump’s interventionist tariffs and other Big Govt policies which violate free market principles. Bailing out Intel is also a violation of the free market. Mismanaged companies should be allowed to fail. Often they get lazy and become major welfare recipients.
Advisory Committees are called when the FDA needs a more in-depth scientific analysis. They make sense on paper, but I’ve seen them go off the rails, probably due to the egos involved. Sometimes they recommend “no approval,” and everyone says WTF? To me they are a source of extra risk in the approval process.
Having said that, I know any brand-new therapy is going to require an AdCom, if only to cover the FDA’s butt.
Thanks. For CAPR, it is better to have a committee of egos balancing each other, than a single dictator like Prasad with power who so far has screwed CAPR.
To JGMD – Just curious if you read the article to which MM provided a link in this RR. It’s called The Forgotten Side of Medicine, and covers the dangers of statins. Pretty sure the author is Dr. Mercola, who I like but is controversial and mostly sells supplements. As a statin taker, I would love to hear your opinion as I’ve valued some medical information you’ve provided in the past. If you’re uncomfortable providing that information here, totally understand – no worries.
I subscribe to Dr. Mercola and get his daily emails. He is correct about most things, although he now advises a high carb diet which is not successful in my experience. Statins have several positive effects beyond just lowering cholesterol. They reduce inflammation in the arteries, further delaying the onset of vascular disease. If you accept the high cholesterol theory, then some cardiologists jokingly recommend high dose statins to get the cholesterol down to ZERO. That is wrong because cholesterol is an important part of myelin, the nerve insulation. Very low cholesterol is associated with depression, suicide and other neurological diseases. The current accepted goal is LDL of 50, which I think is reasonable. Another factor is LDL particle size. Small, dense LDL particles bombard the blood vessel wall, a negative factor. This is found with metabolic syndrome or diabetes when triglycerides are much higher than HDL, the “good” cholesterol. In contrast, if triglycerides are lower than HDL, LDL particles are larger and more fluffy than normal, a protective factor. So perhaps LDL can be higher than 50 in this situation. I will discuss this with some cardiologists soon. To get triglycerides low, follow a low carb diet. Fibrate drugs can lower trig by 50%, but a low carb diet is much more effective.
I have found that almost nobody has LDL 50 without cholesterol drugs. Diet and exercise can lower LDL so that you can take lower dose statins to get it down to 50. If you take statins, you MUST take coenzyme Q10 which is depleted by statins. Q10 deficiency impairs the function of the heart and causes low energy, muscle and liver damage. Take the ubiquinol form. The best deal is from costco.com. It is no longer on the shelves in Costco stores. Get Qunol ubiquinol, a red bottle of 120 red 100 mg capsules, take one after breakfast, one after dinner. After a few months, have your MD do coenzyme Q10 blood levels using a diagnosis code R79.89 for insurance. The level should be 2.0 or greater. This will protect you against the common side effects of statins like muscle damage and fatigue. There is still the possibility of liver damage, so don’t drink any alcohol. Avoid tylenol which damages the liver. Get slender so you can avoid many drugs which can damage the liver. Then you can benefit from lower dose statins. Overweight commonly causes fatty liver which would increase statin risk. Get a body fat scale from Amazon. For nonathletic men, 15% is good, for women, 22%. This is different from BMI, which doesn’t account for muscularity and build.
VANCOUVER – August 21, 2025 – NervGen Pharma Corp. (TSXV: NGEN) (OTCQB: NGENF), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing first-in-class neuroreparative therapeutics for spinal cord injury and other neurologic disorders, today announced positive preclinical results of two Department of Defense sponsored studies in models of blast-induced sensorineural hearing loss and peripheral nerve injury, reinforcing the broad therapeutic application of its first and potential best-in-class candidate, NVG-291.
Presented at the 2025 Military Health System Research Symposium, the studies show that NVG-291-R, the rodent variant of NVG-291, promoted significant functional recovery in models of blast-induced sensorineural hearing loss and peripheral nerve injury, two debilitating conditions affecting military and civilian populations.
I was getting ready to buy more NGENF in the quiet period, but then this news hit. I think the stock will retreat again after a run from this news. This is only a preclinical study. We know that NVG-291 works in various neurological conditions from other preclinical studies in the past. The only news that really counts is notice of human studies for these conditions besides spinal cord injury, followed by how they will be funded. If the stock runs to $3 or more, it is a selling opportunity. However, 10 years from now, the stock probably will be a big winner, so I might not time this too well. I will probably just buy and hold on pullbacks in quiet periods again.
Chris?
This is one I’m involved in as well and will welcome and appreciate any added insight.
Thanks for the very detailed response. Very helpful and much appreciated!
There is no correlation between high cholesterol and death by heart attacks. Or any other cardiac event. 29 years ago I was as told I HAD to take statins the rest of my life after open heart surgery. And I had to go on an extremely low fat diet immediately. Shortly after that I stopped taking statin drugs. And a few years later I got off that insane low fat diet. Amazingly, I am still above the dirt. Something many of the medical voices said wouldn’t happen!!
The data is mixed on cholesterol and heart attacks. This is politically charged info, just as with many other things like vaccines. Big Pharma pushes statins, alternative guys say cholesterol has nothing to do with heart attacks. Very high cholesterol is bad for heart attacks, but is moderate LDL of 120 bad? Statins have additional protective effects like reducing inflammation in the arteries. A better question is searching whether statins lower the risk of heart attacks. Many cardiologists recommend statins even if cholesterol is normal, because statins reduce inflammation. The standards are different for primary vs secondary prevention. Primary prevention is for people with no history of vascular disease. Secondary prevention is for those who have already had heart attacks or strokes. It is clear that for secondary prevention, statins prevent further heart attacks and strokes. But for primary prevention, the debate continues. It sounds like you are in the primary prevention category. Still, you could have asymptomatic vascular disease. I would recommend you do a calcium score test of the coronary arteries. If zero, your risk is low and statins might not help much. If over 10, take the statins. I have seen patients who never had a vascular event with calcium scores over 1000, but they could have mild vascular disease which is asymptomatic. But there is a correlation of calcium scores with the extent of atherosclerosis and risk of vascular events or death. To reduce the risk from statins, take ubiquinol and follow the other advice I gave.
The low fat diet is a high carb diet, which increases triglycerides and reduces HDL. That is associated with small, dense LDL particles which damage the blood vessels.
A few years ago, I had several symptoms of a heart attack. Went to hospital where every test imaginable that my insurance company paid for was run. Went home the next morning with the advice that I was likely experiencing “gas”.
Later that morning, my GP called and said he wanted me in his office ASAP. I went in and he said he saw my info in “My Chart” and said he scheduled a Calcium Score test for the next day. The test showed considerable blockage in the widow maker and I was to meet my heart Dr the next day. He scheduled me for surgery in two days which proved to be 80% blockage resulting in 2 stents. That test probably saved my life. The only reason the Emergency Room didn’t run the Calcium test was insurance didn’t cover it. Cost was $130. I was on Lipitor 10mg at the time and my heart Dr changed it to 40mg, which I currently take.
This talk about LDL and HDL is somewhat different than what I’ve been hearing, which isn’t much.
one thing I’ve learned about the Calcium test is it is only based on the hardened portion of the sludge and as the nonhardened portion calcifies, further attention will probably be required.
Larry, I salute your GP who saved your life, unlike hospital docs who missed the boat. Most of today’s doctors are regulation-indoctrinated robots who blindly follow the standard of care which doesn’t include doing coronary calcium score tests. What was your calcium score? It was probably several hundred or more, correlating with extent of atherosclerosis. Maybe the small 10 mg dose of Lipitor controlled your cholesterol, but either the LDL cholesterol was still over 50, or the higher 40 mg dose lowered LDL to 50, and/or it reduced inflammation in the artery. Statins like Lipitor stabilize the plaque by hardening the plaque. Hardened plaques rupture less than soft plaques. The statins RAISE the calcium score, because statins stabilize the plaque by calcifying it. So don’t do any more calcium score tests–you will get upset because your calcium score will increase, but you will be protected in reality. This is an example of the art of medicine which is different than objective data like calcium scores. The calcium score gets worse with statins, but heart attacks are reduced. This is a drawback of AI which easily gathers objective data, but only clinicians with enough experience know the real truth. Lipitor 40 mg is appropriate, but also take Ubiquinol from Qunol, 100 mg 2x/day with meals, which will maintain the coenzyme Q10 level depleted by Lipitor.
Calcified plaques may still cause blockages, so if you have angina chest pain, you can get stents or bypasses. But you don’t die from angina. You suddenly die from heart attacks (MI). Paradoxically, a smaller 40% blockage is more likely to cause an MI than a 90% blockage. This is because the 40% blockage is more likely to be a soft plaque that ruptures and results in a blood clot which results in 100% blockage. The 90% blockage from calcium deposits from statins is more stable.
My overall approach is to exercise, follow the proper diet to reduce cholesterol and ratio of triglycerides/HDL. Do the calcium score test once to estimate your actual amount of coronary artery blockages. For significant scores, that correlates with the risk of heart attacks, so taking statins is important. Everyone should take vitamin D for general health. The main risk with vitamin D is that the serum calcium rise, which would calcify arteries and lead to more blockages. So I also take vitamin K in the form of MK7 to put the calcium into the bones rather than the arteries. I take Orthomolecular Products’ MK7 180 mcg, one a day. Life Extension, Super K has several forms of MK and is cheaper. Take one a day.
JGMD
it will be 5 years this Oct since my Calcium scan and stent surgery. Since the score only represents the calcified portion, is a second Calcium score recommended to determine if the calcified sludge has increased? My initial scores were
CALCIUM SCORING:
Left main coronary artery: 39.2
Left anterior descending coronary artery: 555
Circumflex coronary artery: 136
Right coronary artery: 90.1
Total Calcium Scoring: 820
feel free to send me your info so I can Zelle your consultation fee to you
No fee needed among friends. Just as I thought, high calcium scores. Which arteries got the 2 stents? We might think that the LAD had the most blockage because it has the highest calcium. Not necessarily. The left main is the most serious, called the widow maker. Plaque there is more likely to cause sudden death from arrhythmia compared to other arterial blockages. Another question is whether you had angina or a heart attack (MI). You should ask your cardiologist what happened 5 years ago. The medical record might tell you if you had elevations of cardiac enzymes like MB CPK or troponin which would indicate an MI. Serial EKG’s at that time would be helpful also. My guess is that your cardiac enzymes and EKG’s were normal since the hospital sent you home with a diagnosis of gas. Angina might be more likely from an artery with the most blockage, but MI is more likely in an artery with lesser blockage whose plaque is soft, unstable and more likely to rupture, resulting in a blood clots which causes 100% blockage. Also, a blockage is a combination of cholesterol plaque with calcium on top, like icing on the plaque cake. I don’t advise repeating the calcium score test, because it will probably increase. That will scare you, but you are better off by taking the higher dose of Lipitor. Keep your LDL around 50. Measure your high sensitivity C-reactive protein which tells you the level of inflammation in your body, esp the coronary arteries. Keep it as low as possible, way below 1.0 mg/L. Lipitor lowers hsCRP, a good thing. Don’t do the hsCRP test if you were sick recently, because infectious illnesses dramatically increase CRP. More info can be obtained from a CT angiogram or coronary angiogram, but these are both invasive tests with lots of radiation, so I don’t advise them. (I feel sorry for women with cancer in their left breast who often get radiation therapy. The radiation damages the coronary arteries beneath the left breast and increases their risk for coronary artery disease.) The CT angiogram might distinguish the components of the plaque–cholesterol accumulation plus calcium cap, like the good roof over the cholesterol house. I don’t think the CT angio is worth the radiation risks of it. Doctors love to order tests for theoretical interest, but often the outcome doesn’t change the treatment approach, so I say, why bother. If anything, more calcium may stabilize the arteries further, helping to prevent MI in the future.
Get a body fat scale. Your body fat should be no higher than 15%. Most older men are much higher. Moderate intensity exercise has a blood thinning effect, benefitting your heart. Keep your blood pressure around 120/80. Take the ubiquinol, vitamin D and K2. Take high potency B complex to maintain low homocysteine levels, another risk factor for CAD. A good multivitamin like Life Extension Two per Day does this. Take one after breakfast, one after dinner.
Of course, don’t smoke or drink alcohol. Alcohol increases the incidence of dementia.
Write your email here, so we can followup. Where do you live?
Cantwate2000@yahoo.com
I forgot to notice that you had open heart surgery. If that was for valvular heart disease but not coronary artery bypass, then you are in the category of high cholesterol without significant coronary artery disease (CAD). You could do a coronary calcium score test once to see your extent of CAD. If high, then you would benefit from statins. But if your open heart surgery was for CAD, you need statins, and follow my guidance for Larry below. Still, it is good that you got off the low fat diet, which causes higher diabetes risk, bad for the heart. The worst kind of low fat diet is high unrefined sugar. This is the worst for development of diabetes. Also, high sugar leads to more body synthesis of cholesterol.
Thanks , great information. I will seek out the calcium test. Even if my insurance doesn’t pay for it. One of the main reasons I stopped the statins was the effect it had on my muscles. I do take vitamin D in the form of cod liver oil, (and try to get 20 minutes of sunshine directly on my skin every day). . Vitamin K in sauerkraut? I think ? Thanks for all the information you gave Larry and me. Very generous of you! Much appreciated, sir. Also I stay off of refined sugar. I used to be a sugar addict when I was a teenager and soon learned that was NOT a good thing. I told my coworkers at one point, the last candy bar I had was on July 4 . 1964. That was the truth and they were flabbergasted!
Cardiologists prefer the CT angiogram to the coronary calcium score test (CCS). The CT angio gives much more info, since it looks at the complete length of the arteries, and the CT shows cross-sectional views to see if there is a long stretch of calcium and blockages. There might be a long stretch of small blockages and calcium deposits which would be less dangerous than a short stretch of near complete blockages. But there is SO MUCH Xray radiation that I like the CCS which has only moderate radiation. You can search to see how many millisieverts of radiation there is in each. I forgot. The CT angio is covered by insurance but the CCS isn’t. This is another objection to insurance control. Some bureaucrat executive made the decision about which test would be covered which an individual MD could disagree with. The CCS is cheap enough so anyone could afford it. It will give enough info to help you decide if statins would be helpful for you.
Normally I emphasize diet over supplements, but for vitamin D and K, studies have used supplements, so I prefer steady doses every day, then months later, do the vitamin D 25 hydroxy test. In the US, the target level is 50-80 ng/ml. Canada uses the EU standard which is 125-200 nmol/L. Cod liver oil is OK, but there might be too much vitamin A in it. Some brands have low vitamin A. Vitamin A may oppose the action of D. I get A from carrots and greens which have beta carotene which then converts to A. You can do blood tests for A and beta carotene. For K, use the Life Extension Super K which is cheap. Search the ICD10 list for insurance codes for vitamin A. The R79 series tells you which nutrition item is tested.
Coenzyme Q10 in the form of ubiquinol 100 mg 2x/day will restore the Q10 lost by statins. That will prevent muscle damage from statins, but you have to do blood tests of coenzyme Q10 to assess that. The level should be 2 or higher. The doctor should use the ICD10 diagnosis code R79.89 for this. This test is offered by the standard labs Quest, Labcorp and maybe others.
My only regular treat is dark chocolate, a little once a week. It has the lowest sugar, and the antioxidants of cocoa compensate for the sugar risk for vascular health. Most of the pleasure from treats is the first bite, so keep the portion small. This is like classical music which uses quick bursts of loud percussion vs rock music which bangs away for a long time.
Lindt Excellence dark chocolate bar! 85% cocoa, or another percent you choose from their offerings from 70% to 100%. Less sugar than most other brands. (Note that the higher their cocoa percentage, the less sugar in the bar, and the smaller the total weight they offer per bar.)
Right. I tried 100% cocoa, but it tastes like charcoal. I can tolerate 85-86%, and I settle for 70% as my favorite. Milk chocolate is 35%, too much sugar. My tastes have changed. I used to prefer milk chocolate, but now I like purer chocolate. Once you cut sugar, you can better enjoy savory foods like Brussels sprouts, broccoli, etc.
Thanks again for all the information. I use fermented cod liver oil by Green Pastures . (From cod from Alaska) . I don’t know how much A is in it. And I also eat carrots. And follow a Mediterranean style diet, am very active and ride my exercise bike 5 days a week for 30 minutes. My doc does the treadmill stress test with me with those leads hooked up to my body but hasn’t done that for awhile. I also do that chocolate thing but it has no sugar.But I will be changing that because I just found out that cocoa has lots of pesticides!!
The treadmill test can be normal with moderate 30-40% blockages. You could have excellent exercise capacity with those blockages. Analogy–the bathtub could drain OK with moderate hair blockages. At any time, the drainage could slow down a little, so expect you’ll need to snake the drain in the near future.
The purpose of statins is long term prevention. For 40% blockages, exercise capacity may be good, but the plaque could be unstable and rupture, resulting in a blood clot which causes 100% blockage and a heart attack (MI). Statins stabilize the plaque and reduce the odds of MI. If your calcium score is zero, you have time to think about it. But if the CCS is over 100, there is trouble ahead. Above 400, there is a high likelihood of major cardiac events ahead. Start statins if the CCS is above 100 or so, even if you have a healthy lifestyle and eat healthy, exercise and take supplements. Apparently healthy old people have higher CCS than comparable younger people, no surprise.
The foregoing is standard cardiologist advice which I agree with. You can do better than the average patient who does nothing except take drugs. Pesticides cause oxidative damage to blood vessels, so thanks for the tip about cocoa. Go for organic dark chocolate. Infrequent dark chocolate is probably OK, since the antioxidants help mitigate against pesticides. I haven’t had ice cream in a long time.
My bet is Powell does NOT cut interest rates , tomorrow. Markets fall.
Bought more AKBA
Good move.
I highly recommend Blink of an Eye Podcast episode # 276 with Brad Lang who was a grad student in Jerry Silver’s lab who helped invent NVG-291. He is not employed with NervGen, but holds shares
Doesn’t reference the OTC symbol (NGENF) only TSX (NGEN):
This Tiny Canadian Stock Could Skyrocket if That Drug Trial Succeeds | The Motley Fool Canada
http://www.fool.ca/2025/08/26/this-tiny-canadian-stock-could-skyrocket-if-that-drug-trial-succeeds/
New World Investor for 8.28.25 is posted. PLTR & TGTX back on the Buy list.