Andranik Hakobyan/iStock via Getty Images Overview My last analysis of Milestone Pharmaceuticals ( MIST ) immediately followed the FDA approval of CARDAMYST (etripamil), a calcium channel blocker administered intranasally to terminate PSVT in adults. I spent a lot of time talking about the alternatives for “at-home” PSVT termination…like low-cost, generic, oral, and long-familiar antiarrhythmics l...
Andranik Hakobyan/iStock via Getty Images Overview My last analysis of Milestone Pharmaceuticals ( MIST ) immediately followed the FDA approval of CARDAMYST (etripamil), a calcium channel blocker administered intranasally to terminate PSVT in adults. I spent a lot of time talking about the alternatives for “at-home” PSVT termination…like low-cost, generic, oral, and long-familiar antiarrhythmics like diltiazem. Although CARDAMYST, essentially, takes the obvious MoA and packages it in a branded nasal spray, I was uncertain if payers would dish out hundreds of dollars for the perceived convenience when an off-label oral costs a few single dollars. I also discussed its pursuits in atrial fibrillation (Phase 3 ready), which is a much larger market but also has an existing, low-cost “pill-in-the-pocket” strategy. I rated MIST a cautious “Hold,” warning that “there is a non-zero chance that CARDAMYST (...) may never see a return-on-investment (accounting for development and launch costs).” Its stock has since fallen 27%. Data by YCharts Because the company has since launched CARDAMYST in the US, I wanted to take another look at MIST. PSVT CARDAMYST became available in late January with plans for a “national sales force to be deployed in mid-February 2026.” Now, its WAC is ~$1649 per prescription, but management expects net prices between $500 and $1000. We've chosen this price in part because of the value prop that CARDAMYST represents relative to the other treatment modalities, which insurance companies must reimburse, whether it's emergency department visits or hospitalizations or ablations. Management leans heavily on CARDAMYST’s potential to decrease ER visits or hospitalizations, but there is no such data that confirms CARDAMYST’s efficacy here. In an article published in The Lancet , while there was a numerical trend in ER visits favoring CARDAMYST, it did not conclusively beat out a placebo. There were lower percentages of patients seeking additional medical interv...
mediaVi/iStock via Getty Images Insurers providing war cover in Persian Gulf countries face higher risks as the US and Israel continue their air campaign against Iran. Iran has hit a range of non-military targets in the Gulf in retaliation for the US-Israeli airstrikes, which began Feb. 28. Attacks on critical infrastructure in Gulf states are likely to continue as the US and Israel degrade Iran's...
mediaVi/iStock via Getty Images Insurers providing war cover in Persian Gulf countries face higher risks as the US and Israel continue their air campaign against Iran. Iran has hit a range of non-military targets in the Gulf in retaliation for the US-Israeli airstrikes, which began Feb. 28. Attacks on critical infrastructure in Gulf states are likely to continue as the US and Israel degrade Iran's longer-range attack capabilities, target critical Iranian infrastructure and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operates more autonomously, according to Jack Kennedy, head of Middle East and North Africa country risk at S&P Global Market Intelligence. "With Iran's command chain progressively targeted, military units appear to be shifting to a doctrine of decentralized operations, increasing the likelihood of opportunistic strikes," Kennedy said in emailed comments March 9. Range of risks While Iran has targeted US military infrastructure in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, it has also hit civilian property, including hotels, airports and energy facilities. Hotels in Dubai and Bahrain were attacked early in the conflict, while Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. was forced shut a refinery after suffering a fire caused by drone strikes . Bahrain's energy company, Bapco Energies B.S.C. Closed, declared force majeure on its group operations following an attack on its refinery complex. A possible early example of the IRGC's autonomy was the attack on the Port of Duqm in Oman, for which the Iranian regime reportedly apologized, according to Bilal Bassiouni, head of risk forecasting at risk advisory firm Pangea-Risk. "We may see more similar situations where the IRGC or military leadership take on ad-hoc responsibilities [for choosing targets]," Bassiouni said in a March 3 interview. That heightens the risk for a wider variety of assets. The likelihood of Iranian strikes on energy facilities grows the more the US and Israeli air campaign intensifies and the more cornere...
Polymarket has partnered with Palantir Technologies and TWG AI to develop a next-generation sports integrity platform. This was announced by Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan. The collaboration focuses on building advanced monitoring tools using Palantir’s data integration and anomaly detection capabilities, combined with TWG AI’s expertise in financial infrastructure and sports. The core technology is...
Polymarket has partnered with Palantir Technologies and TWG AI to develop a next-generation sports integrity platform. This was announced by Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan. The collaboration focuses on building advanced monitoring tools using Palantir’s data integration and anomaly detection capabilities, combined with TWG AI’s expertise in financial infrastructure and sports. The core technology is the Vergence AI engine, a joint venture product from Palantir and TWG AI created last year. Key goals include: Detecting, preventing, and reporting suspicious or anomalous trading activity in real time. Monitoring millions of data points to flag potential manipulation, unusual patterns, or misuse of information. Screening participants against banned lists from traditional sports betting. Producing compliance reports and tools to support leagues, teams, and regulators. This comes amid growing scrutiny of prediction markets—especially sports-related ones—as they’ve exploded in popularity for events like elections, geopolitics, and now sports. Concerns about insider trading, market manipulation, and the need for credibility have intensified, with some platforms including Polymarket already referring insider cases to regulators like the CFTC. The partnership aims to set a higher standard for integrity in prediction markets, particularly as they push toward more regulated frameworks; potential U.S. federal oversight for certain aspects. Polymarket emphasized that this could benefit the broader sports ecosystem by providing better visibility and tools than the current fragmented, state-by-state sports betting compliance setups. They described it as promoting “trust, transparency, and reliability” for participants and institutions, highlights it as a response to insider trading risks in these markets, with the system designed to identify such activity proactively. On X, reactions range from excitement about scaling and enterprise-grade tech to conspiracy-tinged speculation; compa...
Two tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas are heading to India after crossing the Strait of Hormuz, providing some relief to acute shortages as the war in the Persian Gulf disrupts supply of the cooking fuel. The ships were granted safe transit through the strait — which has been all but closed for nearly two weeks — after a deal between New Delhi and Tehran, according to people familiar with t...
Two tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas are heading to India after crossing the Strait of Hormuz, providing some relief to acute shortages as the war in the Persian Gulf disrupts supply of the cooking fuel. The ships were granted safe transit through the strait — which has been all but closed for nearly two weeks — after a deal between New Delhi and Tehran, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. They did not provide details. The tankers — Shivalik and Nanda Devi — were chartered by state-run Indian Oil Corp. and should arrive in India next week, the people said. The vessels are owned by state-run Shipping Corp of India Ltd. India’s Ministry of External Affairs didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. An Iranian official familiar with the matter, who also declined to be named as he’s not authorized to speak to the media, said he could not confirm an agreement. Indian Oil did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment. Both ships have signaled through their AIS systems, used by ships to transmit their whereabouts, that they’re Indian government vessels. Ship-tracking data shows that the Shivalik has already sailed through the strait. The Nanda Devi appears to be in transit, although electronic interference around the waterway complicates accurate monitoring of location. Both loaded from Ras Laffan in Qatar. Read More: Crowds Besiege India’s LPG Dealers as War Crimps Supply India has been suffering acute shortage of LPG, used for cooking and industrial processes and in petrochemical units to make plastics. The country is the second-largest importer of of the fuel, and takes 90% of it from the Middle East. India, which also takes a large proportion of its crude from the Persian Gulf, has been in talks with Iran to secure the passage of tankers through the strait. A number of LPG vessels are now lined up to make the crossing, the people said.
peshkov/iStock via Getty Images By Igor Oliveira Quantitative finance continues to debate the reliability and limits of model-driven investment strategies. One central question is how much weight investors should place on backtesting. In The Factor Mirage: How Quant Models Go Wrong , Marcos López de Prado, PhD, and Vincent Zoonekynd, PhD, outline why investors should move beyond accepting historic...
peshkov/iStock via Getty Images By Igor Oliveira Quantitative finance continues to debate the reliability and limits of model-driven investment strategies. One central question is how much weight investors should place on backtesting. In The Factor Mirage: How Quant Models Go Wrong , Marcos López de Prado, PhD, and Vincent Zoonekynd, PhD, outline why investors should move beyond accepting historical performance at face value and focus on understanding why a model works. That is a valuable contribution to strengthening the rigor of quantitative investing — and one that invites further reflection on how that reasoning is structured. It may help to frame the issue not as a binary choice between correlation and causation, but as a layered problem in which different forms of reasoning play distinct roles. In practice, the choice is rarely between simple correlation and fully specified causality. Most investment research operates somewhere in between. Sometimes we can describe and test a mechanism directly. Sometimes we cannot. The system may move too quickly, key variables may be only partially observable, or the time and resources required to build a richer model may not be available. In those settings, association-based reasoning still has value. That is not a defect of finance; it is a general feature of decision-making under uncertainty. Association Under Constraint Human beings often rely on associations when there is no time to construct a full causal account. That is not necessarily irrational; it can be adaptive. A fast association can guide action before slower, more elaborate reasoning is possible. The same is true in investment practice. When relevant drivers cannot be directly observed or causal structure is only partly understood, associational signals may still contain useful information. Association is not explanation. The question is not whether association has value, but whether it is sufficient. For institutional investors, this distinction has practica...