The swine flu outbreak has come during a horribly vulnerable time for the global economy, but at least on Monday, toxic balance sheets won't be the #1 news story.
Instead we'll be trying to figure out if this is the big one, or if it's just a prelude.
Two of the ones to watch tomorrow: Biocryst (BCRX) and Novavax (NVAX), vaccine makers which were up 26% and 75% respectively on Friday as news emerged of the disease striking in Mexico. We'll be shocked if they don't go crazy again on Monday, now that the story's gotten much bigger and because Novavax still has a market cap of under $100 million. It won't take much to make it go crazy.
Other companies that may profit from swine flu include Roche -- who's Tamiflu has had some effect and Gilead (GILD), which gets royalties from its sale.
This blog offers up some more speculative names including NanoViricides (NNVC) and Sinovac Biotech (SVA)
A stock we'd expect to see selling in: Hormel (HRL).
Any other ideas and guesses as to how the story will effect the markets and individual stocks? We'd love to hear 'em.
