Are Atea Pharmaceuticals, Agenus, Novavax, and Ocular Therapeutix Bad News Buy?

Biotech stocks are in a slump. Despite numerous wins in the high-profile areas of COVID-19 and cancer therapy, the industry has failed to excite investors this year -- as seen in the 12% year-to-date fall in the the bellwether SPDR S&P Biotech ETF. Risk-tolerant growth investors appear to be favoring other vehicles over biotech in 2021, such as the red-hot cryptocurrency Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB), electric-vehicle giant Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), and emerging social media plays such as Digital World Acquisition (NASDAQ: DWAC) and Phunware (NASDAQ: PHUN).

The reason for this broad shift in investor sentiment? The Shiba Inu coin has produced life-altering gains for investors in just the past 14 months, Tesla's shares have risen by over 1,600% in the past three years, and the Donald Trump-associated social media plays Digital World Acquisition and Phunware have both gone parabolic in the past week alone. Topping it off, several biotech companies have been hit with the bad-news bug this year.

For instance, Atea Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AVIR), Agenus (NASDAQ: AGEN), Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX), and Ocular Therapeutix (NASDAQ: OCUL) were all stung by bad news last week, causing their shares to crater. However, biotech stocks can rebound quickly after bad news. Should growth-oriented investors consider buying these beaten-down biotech stocks next week? Let's take a deeper dive to find out.

Source Fool.com