Lots More on What's Hot at JPM's Health Conference

Joe Weisenthal (0:00)

How's San Francisco?

James van Geelen (0:01)

It's great. I think that a lot of people told me it was gonna be a dystopian hellscape, and it's not that bad.

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

It's the first time you've actually gone, right, to the JPMorgan Health Care Conference?

James van Geelen (0:14)

To this one, yeah, this specific conference.

Joe Weisenthal (0:17)

And what's your first impression of it, I guess? Is there anything that surprised you?

James van Geelen (0:21)

I guess. What really surprised me was the security.

I've been to conferences before where it's kinda like, you can't even go into the hotel without your pass, and they're really strict about it. So I guess that was probably the most surprising thing. But other than that, the meetings are cool, the conference, it's still a conference, right? I'm not gonna be like, oh God, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Although, that did kinda happen here. There was a company that was presenting that has, I guess, you can call it drug GPT, right? It's artificial intelligence, but used to find new drugs.

And that was really cool.

Tracy Alloway (0:59)

I did a deadlift. One, two, three.

One, two.

Joe Weisenthal (1:05)

Barges.

Tracy Alloway (1:06)

This is an after school special, except.

Joe Weisenthal (1:08)

I've decided I'm gonna base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

Where's the best squid ink pasta?

Joe Weisenthal (1:16)

These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

Tracy Alloway (1:19)

No, I think that in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the Odd Lots podcast.

And people will say, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore. We do have...

Joe Weisenthal (1:30)

Cha-ching. You're listening to Lots More, where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now.

Tracy Alloway (1:38)

Because even when the Odd Lots is over, there's always Lots More.

Joe Weisenthal (1:42)

And we really do have the perfect guest.

We're talking to James van Geelen of citriniresearch.com, also known as Citrini on Twitter. You might remember him. We had him on Odd Lots back in August to talk about weight loss drugs, including Ozempic, and how they were going to change everything. That was kind of a prescient conversation, I think, because since then, we've seen even more excitement for a lot of these drugs, and the stocks have taken off even more. James, is that what everyone's talking about at that conference?

James van Geelen (2:14)

I think it's split kind of 50-50 between the Glp-1 drugs and then the ADC cancer stuff because of the cytokinetics acquisition that was announced.

Tracy Alloway (2:25)

I don't like going to conferences typically.

Every once in a while, they're okay. But I know the JPMorgan Health Care Conference, I know it's a big deal. Why is it such a big deal? What is it exactly? Why this one in particular? How did it become such an important event for health care investors?

James van Geelen (2:42)

I don't know the history of the conference, but when you look at the agenda of who's speaking here, everyone that's a big deal, everyone that you would want to know what they're doing, they're kind of here. I think that there's even more value in just sitting in some of the hotel bars, like overhearing how people are talking, you know? Like people seem pretty optimistic on like med tech in the funding environment, and that's almost more valuable to me than the conference itself.

Tracy Alloway (3:08)

So by the way, we're recording this January 10th, Novo Nordisk hitting yet another all time high right now. It's kind of crazy, Tracy, like for all of the hype about the Glp-1 drugs.

A, the stocks keep going higher. And B, I feel like every day there's some other article or thing about here's another thing that they do well, or another area that we're researching that shows promise where it's not just about weight loss, you know, like compulsion or other things. Like it's pretty wild how this is not slowing down.

Joe Weisenthal (3:40)

This is my opportunity to reject the idea of the Odd Lots curse and that we top tick a lot of these things. We did not top tick Novo Nordisk stock, okay?

Tracy Alloway (3:51)

We were early. There's a bunch that we haven't top ticked.

James van Geelen (3:54)

Yeah. I actually, when I got the invite to come back, I remember everyone that was like, if you go on a podcast and you talk about this trend, like that's it, it's over, you know? So when I got the invite to come back, I went and I looked at like Lilly and Novo and so, I think it's like 81% of the time they have been at all time highs since that.