Connect with us

International

Thinking About What To Buy With A $1400 Stimulus Check? 4 Small-Caps To Watch This Week

Will The March Stimulus Rally Spark Larger Moves For These Penny Stocks?

Published

on

This article was originally published by PennyStocks.

Will March Continue to be Bullish For These Penny Stocks?

So far in March, certain penny stocks have seen some big bullish interest. On March 9th, the NASDAQ rallied up by around 4% during intraday trading. These gains were led by tech, as a large rebound occurred following a market correction over the past few weeks. Shares of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) were up by around 15% and 4% respectively.

Furthermore, the DOW hit an all-time high during intraday trading. This obviously isn’t a sign that we are out of the woods yet. But it is definitely encouraging. Courtney Dominguez, a market analyst, stated that “this is a trend that tends to happen as we get out of a recession: You tend to see stocks move towards cyclicals. So things like value companies or small caps, things like energy, tend to do really well when you’re coming out of a recession.”

[Read More] 5 Hot Penny Stocks To Buy Under $1 In March 2021

Something else to consider, millions of Americans could receive stimulus money to the tune of $1,400, depending on how they file taxes. Families could ultimately receive more depending on the number of children accounted for as well. While some will turn and use these funds to pay for monthly bills, as we saw with the last round of stimulus, others will look to invest it. Now, I’m not here to advocate for or against this as it’s totally up to you.

Penny Stocks To Buy [or avoid]

But if history repeats itself, there’s a chance we see traders taking advantage of the government funds to put fresh cash in their brokerage accounts. Which will be the best penny stocks to buy with newfound money? I’ll leave that one up to you as well, but here are a few trending names in the stock market today. Will they be the best penny stocks to buy, or should you avoid them entirely?

  1. Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: TNXP
  2. Artelo Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ: ARTL
  3. Asensus Surgical Inc. (NYSE: ASXC)
  4. Biolase Inc. (NASDAQ: BIOL)

Penny Stocks To Buy [or avoid] #1: Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp. 

One of the more consistent gainers that we’ve seen in the past few months is TNXP stock. Tonix has released some exciting news over the past few months regarding its financials and the substances in its pipeline. In January, Tonix engaged in a $40 million sale of 50 million shares of its common stock. Only a month later, the company raised an additional $70 million.

This is quite common in the biotech industry, as capital is the main source of innovation. On March 9th, Tonix announced that it is developing a skin test to identify Covid-19 patients. The test is similar to the Tuberculosis skin test except, it tests for sensitivity to the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Also, the company continues to work on its vaccine candidate for Covid, known as TNX-1800. This is a modified horsepox virus vaccine that could be put to use in preventing covid infection. 

In its immunology pipeline are several other compounds of interest. This includes TNX-1700, a substance for use with gastric and pancreatic cancers, and TNX-1500 for autoimmune disorders. Tonix is also working on several treatments for CNS disorders, including TNX-102SL, which can treat everything from PTSD to cocaine overdoses and more.

As you can see, Tonix has one of the largest pipelines of many similar biotech penny stocks. This means that it could be on the right track to continue the process of commercialization in the future. While it still has to go through the approval processes with each substance, its large pipeline could make TNXP a penny stock to watch

Biotech Penny Stocks to Watch Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp

#2: Artelo Biosciences Inc.

Another intriguing biotech penny stock is Artelo Biosciences Inc. Based in California, Artelo is a producer and developer of proprietary therapeutics that can treat various illnesses. It is currently working on utilizing lipid signaling pathways which include the endocannabinoid system. In its product pipeline are compounds that treat everything from PTSD and inflammation to anorexia and cancer.

On March 9th, Artelo announced the appointment of Tamara Seymour to its board of directors. Connie Matsui, Chair of the Board, stated that “we are pleased to welcome Tamara to Artelo’s board of directors. Tamara brings with her an impressive track record in corporate finance and capital markets, as well as extensive experience guiding biopharmaceutical and diagnostic companies from clinical-stage to commercialization.” 

A few weeks ago, the company posted positive pre-clinical data regarding its proprietary CBD-based compound known as ART12.11. Gregory Gorgas, CEO of Artelo, stated that “we are highly encouraged by the results of this preclinical research and look forward to reporting the full results at a future scientific conference. The study observed enhanced effects between CBD and TMP, versus either compound alone, reinforcing our confidence in the potential for enhanced efficacy of our proprietary CBD cocrystal.”

While it isn’t technically a marijuana stock, its work on CBD-related compounds puts it into the ancillary cannabis industry. With the bullish interest in marijuana stocks seen this year, ARTL could be a penny stock to watch. 

Biotech Penny Stocks to Watch Artelo Biosciences Inc ARTL Stock

#3: Asensus Surgical Inc. 

Asensus Surgical (formerly known as TransEnterix Inc.) is a medical device producer focused on Performance Guided Surgery. This month the company finalized its name change as well as its ticker symbol shift to ASXC. Its product pipeline hosts a large range of proprietary tools used by surgeons, including its Senhance Surgical System, which utilizes its Intelligent Surgical Unit or ISU.

[Read More] 5 Penny Stocks To Buy Under $3 Right Now Up Big In 2021

This system allows augmented intelligence and deep learning to be utilized in common surgical procedures. This includes digital laparoscopy. Its tools can help make surgeries more precise and less invasive by offering an easier and more effective surgical method. Ahead of the March 11th release of its Q4 2020 financial data, let’s take a closer look at what Asensus has been up to. 

A few days ago, Asensus announced that it had received an additional FDA clearance for its Senhance Surgical System. This clearance allows the system to be in use in a more general surgical setting. Anthony Fernando, CEO of Asensus, stated that “the expansion into general surgery for the Senhance Surgical System is a major milestone for the growth and clinical applicability of our technology. General surgery is, by far, the largest area of manual laparoscopy, which can benefit from the precision and insight of Performance-Guided-Surgery.

The Senhance Surgical System has potential for use in over 2.7 million general surgical procedures performed in the U.S. annually. Since its name change, ASXC has seen heightened awareness from investors.

Biotech Penny Stocks to Watch Asensus Surgical Inc ASXC Stock Chart

#4: Biolase Inc.

Biolase produces dental lasers for use in various dental applications. Its laser products hold over 271 patented and 40 patent-pending technologies. This goes to show the commitment that Biolase Inc. has to innovation. Also, these patents allow it to be one of the most advanced laser dental systems on the open market.

At the end of last year, Biolase had sold more than 41,200 laser systems to over 80 countries worldwide. On March 9th, BIOL shares climbed slightly on the announcement that the European Patent Office may give a specification to its Dual Pulse-Width Medical Laser With Presets. This is yet another chance that the company has in patenting a groundbreaking technological product. 

Only a few weeks ago, Biolase announced the closing of a $14.4 million bought deal offering. Worth around 14 million shares of common stock, CEO Todd Norbe stated that “this latest offering has bolstered our cash to over $40 million and provides us with the necessary resources to execute the Biolase growth strategy.”

Biotech Penny Stocks to Watch Biolase Inc BIOL Stock Chart

The post Best Penny Stocks To Buy With A $1400 Stimulus? 4 To Watch This Week appeared first on Penny Stocks to Buy, Picks, News and Information | PennyStocks.com.

Read More

Continue Reading

International

There will soon be one million seats on this popular Amtrak route

“More people are taking the train than ever before,” says Amtrak’s Executive Vice President.

Published

on

While the size of the United States makes it hard for it to compete with the inter-city train access available in places like Japan and many European countries, Amtrak trains are a very popular transportation option in certain pockets of the country — so much so that the country’s national railway company is expanding its Northeast Corridor by more than one million seats.

Related: This is what it's like to take a 19-hour train from New York to Chicago

Running from Boston all the way south to Washington, D.C., the route is one of the most popular as it passes through the most densely populated part of the country and serves as a commuter train for those who need to go between East Coast cities such as New York and Philadelphia for business.

Veronika Bondarenko captured this photo of New York’s Moynihan Train Hall. 

Veronika Bondarenko

Amtrak launches new routes, promises travelers ‘additional travel options’

Earlier this month, Amtrak announced that it was adding four additional Northeastern routes to its schedule — two more routes between New York’s Penn Station and Union Station in Washington, D.C. on the weekend, a new early-morning weekday route between New York and Philadelphia’s William H. Gray III 30th Street Station and a weekend route between Philadelphia and Boston’s South Station.

More Travel:

According to Amtrak, these additions will increase Northeast Corridor’s service by 20% on the weekdays and 10% on the weekends for a total of one million additional seats when counted by how many will ride the corridor over the year.

“More people are taking the train than ever before and we’re proud to offer our customers additional travel options when they ride with us on the Northeast Regional,” Amtrak Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Eliot Hamlisch said in a statement on the new routes. “The Northeast Regional gets you where you want to go comfortably, conveniently and sustainably as you breeze past traffic on I-95 for a more enjoyable travel experience.”

Here are some of the other Amtrak changes you can expect to see

Amtrak also said that, in the 2023 financial year, the Northeast Corridor had nearly 9.2 million riders — 8% more than it had pre-pandemic and a 29% increase from 2022. The higher demand, particularly during both off-peak hours and the time when many business travelers use to get to work, is pushing Amtrak to invest into this corridor in particular.

To reach more customers, Amtrak has also made several changes to both its routes and pricing system. In the fall of 2023, it introduced a type of new “Night Owl Fare” — if traveling during very late or very early hours, one can go between cities like New York and Philadelphia or Philadelphia and Washington. D.C. for $5 to $15.

As travel on the same routes during peak hours can reach as much as $300, this was a deliberate move to reach those who have the flexibility of time and might have otherwise preferred more affordable methods of transportation such as the bus. After seeing strong uptake, Amtrak added this type of fare to more Boston routes.

The largest distances, such as the ones between Boston and New York or New York and Washington, are available at the lowest rate for $20.

Read More

Continue Reading

International

The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife

Bird flu is decimating species already threatened by climate change and habitat loss.

I am a conservation biologist who studies emerging infectious diseases. When people ask me what I think the next pandemic will be I often say that we are in the midst of one – it’s just afflicting a great many species more than ours.

I am referring to the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu, which has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals, particularly during the past three years.

This is the strain that emerged in domestic geese in China in 1997 and quickly jumped to humans in south-east Asia with a mortality rate of around 40-50%. My research group encountered the virus when it killed a mammal, an endangered Owston’s palm civet, in a captive breeding programme in Cuc Phuong National Park Vietnam in 2005.

How these animals caught bird flu was never confirmed. Their diet is mainly earthworms, so they had not been infected by eating diseased poultry like many captive tigers in the region.

This discovery prompted us to collate all confirmed reports of fatal infection with bird flu to assess just how broad a threat to wildlife this virus might pose.

This is how a newly discovered virus in Chinese poultry came to threaten so much of the world’s biodiversity.

H5N1 originated on a Chinese poultry farm in 1997. ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock

The first signs

Until December 2005, most confirmed infections had been found in a few zoos and rescue centres in Thailand and Cambodia. Our analysis in 2006 showed that nearly half (48%) of all the different groups of birds (known to taxonomists as “orders”) contained a species in which a fatal infection of bird flu had been reported. These 13 orders comprised 84% of all bird species.

We reasoned 20 years ago that the strains of H5N1 circulating were probably highly pathogenic to all bird orders. We also showed that the list of confirmed infected species included those that were globally threatened and that important habitats, such as Vietnam’s Mekong delta, lay close to reported poultry outbreaks.

Mammals known to be susceptible to bird flu during the early 2000s included primates, rodents, pigs and rabbits. Large carnivores such as Bengal tigers and clouded leopards were reported to have been killed, as well as domestic cats.

Our 2006 paper showed the ease with which this virus crossed species barriers and suggested it might one day produce a pandemic-scale threat to global biodiversity.

Unfortunately, our warnings were correct.

A roving sickness

Two decades on, bird flu is killing species from the high Arctic to mainland Antarctica.

In the past couple of years, bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe and infiltrated North and South America, killing millions of poultry and a variety of bird and mammal species. A recent paper found that 26 countries have reported at least 48 mammal species that have died from the virus since 2020, when the latest increase in reported infections started.

Not even the ocean is safe. Since 2020, 13 species of aquatic mammal have succumbed, including American sea lions, porpoises and dolphins, often dying in their thousands in South America. A wide range of scavenging and predatory mammals that live on land are now also confirmed to be susceptible, including mountain lions, lynx, brown, black and polar bears.

The UK alone has lost over 75% of its great skuas and seen a 25% decline in northern gannets. Recent declines in sandwich terns (35%) and common terns (42%) were also largely driven by the virus.

Scientists haven’t managed to completely sequence the virus in all affected species. Research and continuous surveillance could tell us how adaptable it ultimately becomes, and whether it can jump to even more species. We know it can already infect humans – one or more genetic mutations may make it more infectious.

At the crossroads

Between January 1 2003 and December 21 2023, 882 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal.

Of these fatal cases, more than half were in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos. Poultry-to-human infections were first recorded in Cambodia in December 2003. Intermittent cases were reported until 2014, followed by a gap until 2023, yielding 41 deaths from 64 cases. The subtype of H5N1 virus responsible has been detected in poultry in Cambodia since 2014. In the early 2000s, the H5N1 virus circulating had a high human mortality rate, so it is worrying that we are now starting to see people dying after contact with poultry again.

It’s not just H5 subtypes of bird flu that concern humans. The H10N1 virus was originally isolated from wild birds in South Korea, but has also been reported in samples from China and Mongolia.

Recent research found that these particular virus subtypes may be able to jump to humans after they were found to be pathogenic in laboratory mice and ferrets. The first person who was confirmed to be infected with H10N5 died in China on January 27 2024, but this patient was also suffering from seasonal flu (H3N2). They had been exposed to live poultry which also tested positive for H10N5.

Species already threatened with extinction are among those which have died due to bird flu in the past three years. The first deaths from the virus in mainland Antarctica have just been confirmed in skuas, highlighting a looming threat to penguin colonies whose eggs and chicks skuas prey on. Humboldt penguins have already been killed by the virus in Chile.

A colony of king penguins.
Remote penguin colonies are already threatened by climate change. AndreAnita/Shutterstock

How can we stem this tsunami of H5N1 and other avian influenzas? Completely overhaul poultry production on a global scale. Make farms self-sufficient in rearing eggs and chicks instead of exporting them internationally. The trend towards megafarms containing over a million birds must be stopped in its tracks.

To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.

Diana Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Read More

Continue Reading

International

This is the biggest money mistake you’re making during travel

A retail expert talks of some common money mistakes travelers make on their trips.

Published

on

Travel is expensive. Despite the explosion of travel demand in the two years since the world opened up from the pandemic, survey after survey shows that financial reasons are the biggest factor keeping some from taking their desired trips.

Airfare, accommodation as well as food and entertainment during the trip have all outpaced inflation over the last four years.

Related: This is why we're still spending an insane amount of money on travel

But while there are multiple tricks and “travel hacks” for finding cheaper plane tickets and accommodation, the biggest financial mistake that leads to blown travel budgets is much smaller and more insidious.

A traveler watches a plane takeoff at an airport gate.

Jeshoots on Unsplash

This is what you should (and shouldn’t) spend your money on while abroad

“When it comes to traveling, it's hard to resist buying items so you can have a piece of that memory at home,” Kristen Gall, a retail expert who heads the financial planning section at points-back platform Rakuten, told Travel + Leisure in an interview. “However, it's important to remember that you don't need every souvenir that catches your eye.”

More Travel:

According to Gall, souvenirs not only have a tendency to add up in price but also weight which can in turn require one to pay for extra weight or even another suitcase at the airport — over the last two months, airlines like Delta  (DAL) , American Airlines  (AAL)  and JetBlue Airways  (JBLU)  have all followed each other in increasing baggage prices to in some cases as much as $60 for a first bag and $100 for a second one.

While such extras may not seem like a lot compared to the thousands one might have spent on the hotel and ticket, they all have what is sometimes known as a “coffee” or “takeout effect” in which small expenses can lead one to overspend by a large amount.

‘Save up for one special thing rather than a bunch of trinkets…’

“When traveling abroad, I recommend only purchasing items that you can't get back at home, or that are small enough to not impact your luggage weight,” Gall said. “If you’re set on bringing home a souvenir, save up for one special thing, rather than wasting your money on a bunch of trinkets you may not think twice about once you return home.”

Along with the immediate costs, there is also the risk of purchasing things that go to waste when returning home from an international vacation. Alcohol is subject to airlines’ liquid rules while certain types of foods, particularly meat and other animal products, can be confiscated by customs. 

While one incident of losing an expensive bottle of liquor or cheese brought back from a country like France will often make travelers forever careful, those who travel internationally less frequently will often be unaware of specific rules and be forced to part with something they spent money on at the airport.

“It's important to keep in mind that you're going to have to travel back with everything you purchased,” Gall continued. “[…] Be careful when buying food or wine, as it may not make it through customs. Foods like chocolate are typically fine, but items like meat and produce are likely prohibited to come back into the country.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending