Wednesday, November 11, 2009: Issue #1135

Investing in the biotech sector can be risky – no doubt about that.

But you know what? There are a lot of ways to make money from biotech stocks, too. If you know what to look for, that is.

Two obvious examples include:

• Picking the company behind the next breakthrough drug for cancer or Alzheimer's.
• Digging out companies that are likely takeover targets (something my colleague Louis Basenese does expertly in his Takeover Trader service), or landing lucrative drug partnership deals, which send the stocks higher.

But there's another excellent way that shorter-term investors can grab gains and profit from biotech sector…

Follow the Biotech Sector Conference Buzz

Throughout the year, the biotech sector holds many key conferences where biotech companies make important presentations. If you keep your ear to the ground, you can adopt a proven investment strategy: profiting from the news before it breaks.

Now, there's obviously no guarantee that the stocks in question will rise, or even that the data they present will be positive. But very often, their stocks rise in the days or weeks before these conferences, in anticipation of good news.

Here are a few important conferences to keep an eye on – and some companies that could enjoy some positive press from them…

Three Conferences & Five Biotech Stocks for Your Watch List

On November 15, the AACR-NCI-EORTC Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics conference (surely a leading candidate for the Wordiest Conference Of the Year Award) starts in Boston.