Is the US election likely to challenge pharma and biotech sentiment further?

The pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector has performed well in recent years, primarily by virtue of attractive fundamentals.

Stock by stock performance has, of course, been mixed, but in general, the sector has shrugged off concerns about patent cliffs, generic competition, and a lack of new drugs coming through clinical pipelines, to deliver steady outperformance of the market, despite a lack of earnings growth. This has come about thanks to low starting valuations and increasingly positive expectations for future growth. The sector's growth should be the product of favourable demographics, strong emerging market growth, the increasing prevalence of decadent western diseases such as diabetes, cancer and ca...