Tuesday Trading Ideas

The federal government has asked three drug companies to make enough swine flu vaccine to immunize at least 20 million people in key positions in health care, national security and emergency services, officials said yesterday.

The order, announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, is part of a $1 billion investment in immediate production and testing of vaccine against the newly emerged strain of the H1N1 flu virus. Further orders for potentially hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine are expected.

So, What companies are these?

Sanofi Pasteur (SNY)
Novartis (NVS)
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
MedImmune (AZN)
CSL (CSL.AX)

Last month I did a quick trade on the pandemic hype and make a nice little profit on QDEL, which makes the test to identify the Flu. At the time there was quite a bit of hype with other pharm companies but since none had a "product", I was reluctant to invest in them right away.

Now, it appears that there is going to be a product, and; the governments are putting real money behind it.

Of course, these are just ideas, but perhaps ideas worth looking into.

Happy trading.