With those documents as a background, Reddoch tours labs and manufacturing plants, and meets with corporate executives. He says financial analysts like him rarely talk to company scientists during these visits, because financial analysts often don't understand the vagaries of basic science, so corporate representatives shield them from the day's latest experiments. You have to remember that all of this information is given a spin. . . . If the analyst doesn't understand that 19 of 20 experiments don't work, they might think the company's lead drug candidate is dead. He also spends time talking with physicians and leading scientists to get impressions of a company's technology or drug candidates, and he occasionally serves as an in-house liaison between corporate scientists and coworkers trained only in business.
Days are hectic.
Each morning, Reddoch meets with the senior investment analyst, his boss, to discuss the previous day's happenings. If there is news about any of the companies he covers, they discuss it and decide whether or not to change their buy, hold, or sell recommendations. If a call by a salesperson piques the interest of a portfolio manager, Reddoch may get a call later in the morning for more details. Still, no one's a true expert, he says. We can only know so much - we can know everything there is to know about a company and think it looks great, but if a drug fails in a phase III trial or the FDA rejects a drug, there's no sustaining that company's stock price.