Biotech stocks sink after Hillary Clinton ‘price gouging’ tweet

Wall Street is already betting that a President Hillary Clinton may not be good for the red-hot biotech industry.

Investors can blame much of the carnage on Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who promised to unveil a plan Tuesday that’s designed to put an end to what she described as “price gouging” in the business of making specialty drugs.

The newspaper reported how the price of a drug to treat a deadly parasitic infection soared to $750 a tablet from $13.50 after it was bought in August by a pharmaceutical company.

Clinton’s comments on Monday were her first about how to tackle high drug prices, but she has talked about the problems facing consumers before. It used to trade under the ticker KV-A, but the company imploded after raising the price of an existing premature baby drug called Makena after getting FDA exclusivity – the old price was about $15.00 per patient, then it was jacked up to $1,500 per patient.

Turing did not immediately respond to a request from CNNMoney to comment on Clinton’s remarks.

The biotech sector, as measure by the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (NASDAQ: IBB), fell more than 4% as a result of this tweet, and it appears that bluebird simply got hit especially hard as a result – which is not terribly surprising since bluebird is a rather speculative investment and therefore prone to dramatic swings.

On a day when USA stocks were headed toward gains for the session, biotechnology stocks were down considerably, and the movement began after Clinton’s Twitter post at 10:56 a.m. EDT. The nine biggest losers on the Nasdaq 100 were all biotech stocks, led by BioMarin Pharmaceutical and Biogen, both of which tumbled 6% apiece.

US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen’s warning past year the valuations of small-cap biotech stocks were “substantially stretched” sent the stocks tumbling on fears a bubble might be brewing. The iShares biotech ETF has skyrocketed almost 300% over the past five years, vastly outperforming the broader markets. Retrophin was founded by Shkreli, but he was fired by Retrophin past year and the company has since sued him.

What did Clinton say that has investors so anxious ?