Will your portfolio get you fired?

I woke up this morning with a heavy heart. I looked out the window, saw the rainy drizzle, and thought back to the rainy drizzle this time last year at the Cowen conference. Things were so simple back then; only one investment bank had failed, people still had jobs, everyone thought UTHR could do no wrong and BMRN was going to take over the world with Kuvan.

I thought about those two companies and realized that there are certain stocks that are safe to own from a career perspective and others where ownership will bring automatic firing. Some of this depends on whether or not you are a hedge fund analyst or a vanilloid investor, and whether or not you have already antagonized your portfolio manager via a brilliant unearthing of SQNM at $25, for example.

So for your reading pleasure, I present a hierarchy of stock ideas and the relative career risk level for the analyst who is proposing it:

Safe no matter what:

Gilead - nobody ever got into trouble for owning this. Even if you lost money you had a good reason for it.

Maybe you lost money here but you don't look like an idiot because everyone else did too

United Therapeutics - hey, I talked to a guy who called every doctor in the trial and it works!
Celgene - at some point the sheer earnings power of this company will be apparent. Say when?

Really jeopardizing employment

BioMarin - amazing how one drug can provide negative value to a company
Forest Labs - can justify valuation with a DCF; that and $2.00 will get you a cup of coffee

Pretty much a goner

Arena - if everyone else hates this, and it works, doesn't the stock go down?
Progenics - much like the drug in end-of-life hospice patients, this stock idea provokes instant shitting for portfolio managers throughout the United States. Usually onto their analysts.