Last week, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) announced the marketing approval of Invega extended-release tablets either for solo use or in combination with mood stabilizers and antidepressants for treating schizoaffective disorder. The disorder results in symptoms similar to schizophrenia in addition to mania or depression.

On the same day, the US agency gave its nod of approval to Invega Sustenna -- a once-monthly, injectable version of Invega to treat schizophrenia in adults. It will be marketed in the US by Janssen, a unit of Johnson & Johnson.

Invega Sustenna has been developed using the proprietary technology NanoCrystal Technology, which is a registered trademark of Elan Pharma International Ltd, Ireland, a subsidiary of Elan Corp. plc (ELN). The FDA approved the drug on the basis of two international, randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled studies of schizoaffective disorder patients with acute symptoms.

Approximately, one percent of the world’s population suffers from schizophrenia, which prevents a person

The Canadian markets opened on a weak note but some late-stage buying helped to trim the losses during Monday’s session. For the tale of the tape, the TSX Exchange fell 0.19%, while the TSX Gold Index managed to gain 0.9% and the TSX Venture Exchange, Canada’s largest junior exploration bourse, dropped 0.54% with the decliners beating out the advancers by a 464 to 351 margin on a respectable 181 million shares traded.

Merger mania continued with Silvercorp Metals offering up 0.5 of its shares for each Klondex share. The hostile offer is valued and C$70 million and would give the base metal miner exposure to an advanced gold asset in Nevada. Silvercorp closed down C$0.54 at C$3.82, while Klondex added C$0.58 to C$1.95.

Golden Predator Royalty & Development inked a deal to acquire up to a 70 per cent interest the past producing Brewery Creek project in the

As we are now seeing an ‘echo’ of the huge spike in oil prices that in my view precipitated a US recession as much as the implosion of the credit markets, it’s worth revisiting the 2008 bubble in energy prices. emstrongThe historic oil price shock of 2005-8 was triggered not by a supply interruption like that of the 1970’s but simply by stagnating supply in the face of soaring demand, reducing the daily supply cushion to uncomfortably low levels at 1-1.5m b/d (now up to 5m plus) and magnifying the potential impact of any threatened supply disruption/strong/em , be it from Nigerian militants or a Gulf Hurricane. The impact on prices was exacerbated by a speculative mania that gripped the poorly regulated and opaque energy markets from late 2007, creating a parabolic blow-off move to the $147 high last July. Crucial to this whole destabilizing episode was the role of …

BULL - June 1: Deutsche Bank US equity analyst Binky Chadha forecasts S&P 500 at 1060 by 2009 year-end, citing improving corporate profit margins.  He said aggregate profit margins for S&P 500 “remains well below the average of the last few years, implying considerable potential upside over the medium term.”

BULL - June 1: JP Morgan Chase analyst Thomas Lee forecasts 2009 year-end S&P 500 index at 1100.

BULL - June 1: Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst David Bianco forecasts 2009 year-end S&P 500 index at 1100.

BEAR - May 30: Morgan Stanley equity analyst Jason Todd says sell this S&P 500 rally. He says Morgan Stanley does not see large upside above 825-850.  He said,  “In the rush to buy a cyclical recovery, it seems earnings or valuation no longer matters. We would be comfortable with this view if the earnings trough was closer, but it is not.”

BEAR - MAY 28: Berkshire

Source: The Gold Report  05/29/2009
Gold investors know all too well the psychological importance of $1,000 gold. The yellow metal’s been hovering frustratingly near that level for weeks after briefly surpassing it in February. According to John Kaiser, editor of the Kaiser Bottom-Fishing Report, “we’re getting very close.” In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, John shares his “modest” price forecast of $1,300 – $1,400 within the next six months and presents strategies for gold companies looking to create value.

The Gold Report: John, you have said that you believe gold may go up to $1,300 to $1,400, but probably not higher. Can you give our readers an overview of how you achieved those targets?

John Kaiser: I think we’re ready for a real increase in the price of gold, which is why I am looking at more modest targets, such as $1,300 to $1,400, happening …

October 27, 2008 was the gold mining sector’s Black Monday, the day nearly every stock hit rock bottom. Hindsight makes it plain they got caught in the violent deleveraging that sucked down every equities market in the world.

The broader markets were of course making year-to-date lows at the same time, and unlike gold stocks, they continued falling after a short intermission. In fact, the Dow fell 2,000 points after Obama was elected. In sharp contrast, the mining stocks went on a tear. Between November ’08 and January ’09, many of our BIG GOLD picks made substantial gains, rising anywhere from 45% to 149%.

This good news isn’t the whole story, of course; many mining stocks saw percentage losses greater than the broader market averages during the Big Selloff. But given the fact that gold stocks started rebounding while the broader markets continued lower, the BIG GOLD portfolio ended the

The broad sweep in housing-gold ratios is just as broad and as sweeping as both gold bulls and bears might hope…

Even the UK’s small, tightly packed mainland, floating off the edge of Europe, includes disparate and distinct real-estate markets. Glasgow is as different from London as Cornwall from Cheshire. But in the main (and the mania), and with a peak of 185,000 new dwellings under construction in 2006, the broad sweep of house-price inflation…followed by an inevitable slump lasting six years or so…tends to apply across the nation.

In the United States, in contrast, new housing starts at the peak of what pundits, economists and investment bankers clearly felt was a coast-to-coast boom in 2006 approached 1.63 million amid a total housing market of 128 million units spread across 3.5 million square miles.

By necessity, that makes the idea of an “average” home price more slippery. But let’s not let such quibbles

Blog traffic appears it’s a good indicator of stock market prices. According to Barry Ritholz of The Big Picture, an increase in blog traffic is a good contrarian indicator of stock prices.

Since the market peaked in October 2007, I have pointed out (repeatedly) when TBP traffic soared in response to the credit crisis. Each time, we noted this was a good contrary indicator, and used it as a good short term buy signal for a trade.

And after each short term rally, the public angst was proven correct, and lower lows were had.

This month, I could not help but notice the opposite: that traffic dropped substantially – from over 2.5 million page views in March to just over 2 million in April.

Not coincidentally, we had a rip roaring rally over the same period of time (during which we were suitably bullish). As the economy’s free fall slowed (improving 2nd derivative),

div align=”justify”emCapt. Kirk: What would you say the odds are on our getting out of here? /em/divdiv align=”justify”emMr. Spock: It is difficult to be precise, Captain. I should say approximately 7824.7 to one. /em/divbr /div align=”justify”/divdiv align=”justify”Maybe we need the Star Trek crew in the US Treasury (certainly some of the recent hires look and talk like alien life forms). I’ve never been in the deflation/depression camp, and have consistently argued that the scale of monetary and fiscal stimulus, particularly in the US and UK, allied to the windfall real income gains from falling prices, would generate an economic rebound in 2010. In particular, I considered the speculative spike in energy costs last Summer as the critical tipping point that pushed a teetering US economy firmly into recession; at the time most economists recognized neither the nature of the mania in the oil market nor its destructive economic consequences. /divdiv …