Mornings like we had on Wednesday are exactly why I get up and do this show every single day the market is open.
UniQure NV (QURE) opened around $43. Touched $48.88 intraday. Closed in the high $47s. Previous close: $26.99. An 81% gain, overnight.
Read that last number again. This stock nearly doubled in a single session.
Now, I could just tell you “wow, what a move” and carry on with my day. But that’s not what I do, and it’s not why you’re reading this. Right here I want to walk you through exactly what happened, why it happened, and — more importantly — why I had already positioned for it eight days before the rest of the market noticed.
And once we’ve gone through exactly how all of that came together, then I want to show you where the next one of these bombshell breakthroughs could be hiding, because QURE isn’t an isolated incident.There’s a bevy of biotech catalysts sitting just out of sight of the headlines and I want them to be on your radar before they hit the tape.
From Regulatory Limbo to Wall Street’s Darling Biotech Catalyst Stock
To understand the story, I want to start with the company at the center of it all.
QURE is a Dutch-American gene therapy company currently focused on a breakthrough treatment for Huntington’s Disease.
If you’ve never heard of Huntington’s, consider yourself lucky. It’s a rare, brutal, inherited neurodegenerative condition that tends to take hold in adulthood and gradually erodes movement, mood, and cognition over time.
As of this moment, there are zero approved treatments that slow its progression. Zero. Not “limited options.” Zero.
For months, investors had assumed uniQure faced a long and uncertain path forward after the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) signaled that QURE’s new AMT-130 therapy might not have enough data to support approval.
So come Wednesday morning when the FDA reversed course saying that this same data is now acceptable for an accelerated approval filing, that’s the kind of whiplash that can turn a stock left for dead into the best-performing biotech of the year in a single morning, dropping a 77% green candle on the chart.
My Options Scanner Gave Us Advanced Notice
This stock has been quite a roller coaster since last fall, and it’s worth pausing on for a second, because the ride is half the reason Wednesday hit as hard as it did.
Back at the beginning of March, the FDA had seemingly slammed the door shut on AMT-130 for good and demanded a larger randomized study. Share prices plummeted from $25 to just $9 on the news.
Over the next eight weeks, the price would recover as news of leadership changes at the FDA worked their way into the shares. As a result, speculators flooded into the options chain, where it caught the attention of our Advanced Notice options scanner and started flagging unusual call buying in strikes well above where the stock was actually trading.
This activity wasn’t a one-off trade or a burst of retail enthusiasm. The buyers kept showing up week after week, steadily accumulating truckloads of exposure long before the FDA ever signaled it might soften its stance. This was deep-pocketed institutions quietly positioning for a potentially game-changing catalyst.
The Call I Made on June 9th
Here’s where I want you to lean in, because this is the part that actually matters for your portfolio, not just your curiosity…
On June 9th, during my Masters in Trading Live broadcast, with QURE sitting around $26, I flagged a trade. A multi-million dollar options order hit the tape across the October 33 and 43 strikes. No guesses. No subjective chart patterns. Real, undeniable trades with institutional size and conviction, the kind of orders that don’t come from somebody “trying their luck.”
So I did my due diligence: I checked the skew. And the skew was screaming. Calls roughly $10 above the stock were trading at a steep premium to puts the same distance below. Translation? Somebody with serious capital believed this stock was going higher, and they were willing to pay up to express it.
I laid the trade out plainly: buy the October 33 calls, sell the October 43 calls against them for roughly$3 of total premium. A vertical spread. Defined risk, asymmetric reward, built directly off where the smart money was already positioned.
QURE peaked just above $48 on Wednesday and both my strikes — the 33s and the 43s — are sitting deep in the money sending the spread to just shy of a double in just a week. If it stays above those strikes though October expiration that spread will close for its maximum value of $10.
How We Spot the Smart Money Before the Crowd
The reason I was able to identify QURE before the FDA announcement wasn’t because I have a crystal ball. It wasn’t because I knew someone at the agency. And it certainly wasn’t luck.
It’s because I’ve spent decades developing a repeatable process for reading options flow, identifying catalysts, managing risk, and putting probabilities on my side.
In fact, that’s exactly what I’m teaching inside my Masters in Trading Options Challenge.
Over the course of one week, I walk traders through the same framework I use every day: how to spot unusual options activity, how to structure defined-risk trades, how to think in tranches, and how to separate meaningful signals from market noise.
QURE is a great example of what’s possible when those pieces come together. The goal isn’t to chase yesterday’s winner. The goal is to build the skills necessary to recognize the next opportunity before everyone else is talking about it.
If you’d like to join us, you can learn more about the Masters in Trading Challenge here.
Biotech Catalysts Stocks Move Different
Biotechs do not move like the rest of the market. They don’t care what the Fed says or about the broader tape.
They move on dated, binary catalysts — FDA meetings, PDUFA dates, trial readouts — and in the days and weeks before those events, the people who know something tend to leave fingerprints in the options market. Unusual size. Skewed pricing. That’s what happened with QURE.
This is the entire basis of what I call the biotech catalyst board: find the names with a dated catalyst on the calendar, read what the options market is telling you about direction, size your risk properly, and let the gap do the work for you when it comes.
The Full Board: 5 Names, 5 Catalysts
QURE is the headline today, but it’s not the only name on my board, and honestly, it’s not even the one I was most excited about when I first put this list together. Here’s the full lineup, guys, and why each one earned its spot.
Celcuity Inc. (CELC) — The Smart-Money Darling
Gedatolisib has an FDA decision coming July 17th for PIK3CA-wild-type breast cancer, and this one’s a perfect lesson in reading past the headline. The drug worked — a 50% risk reduction against the comparator, statistically about as clean as it gets, and it hit its primary endpoint. The stock still got crushed. Why? An expectation gap, not a drug failure — the progression-free survival numbers came in close to, but just under, an earlier Phase 1b read, and the market punished the miss instead of crediting the win. Here’s what told me not to panic: Baker Bros, Perceptive, Avoro, and Soleus — the funds that actually understand this disease state — all sat through the entire drawdown. The FDA machinery is still fully intact too, Breakthrough Therapy and Priority Review both still active. The one thing I’m watching post-approval is that $400 million debt raise — that’s a commercial ramp question, not a regulatory one.
Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. (IONS) — The Double-Catalyst Name
I called this one my favorite the first time I put this board together, and I’ll tell you why again: two separate dated catalysts instead of one. Olezarsen has an FDA decision June 30th on triglyceride lowering, and then there’s a second PDUFA behind it in September for zilganersen. Citi has it as a top pick with a $115 price target. That’s the bull case, clean as can be. But I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t flag the wrinkle that’s shown up since: insiders have been net sellers to the tune of roughly $57.8 million over the last three months. Doesn’t kill the thesis. It does mean I’m watching the tape a little closer than I was the first time I brought this name up.
Celldex Therapeutics Inc. (CLDX) — The Smart-Money Stack
Barzolvolimab’s Phase 3 data in chronic spontaneous urticaria isn’t landing until Q4 of next year, and last time I looked at this one I told you straight up — I love the fund ownership, I don’t love the price of the options right now. That’s still true. Wellington, Deep Track, and Commodore are all stacked into this name, and Wellington alone is up double digits on the position. There’s a $300 million raise behind them, and a Phase 2 prurigo nodularis readout coming this summer that’ll act as a preview before the real Phase 3 event. The setup is good. The volatility is still rich enough that I’m not paying up for premium yet — this is a name to keep on the watchlist, not chase into October pricing in June.
Travere Therapeutics Inc. (TVTX) — The One That Already Won
I moved past this one quickly the first time around because the catalyst was already in the rearview — FILSPARI got approved for FSGS back in April. That’s not nothing, that’s a stock that already had its gap. The story now is entirely different: it’s commercial execution, and increasingly, a takeout conversation. Both Citi and JPMorgan have it rated Overweight. If you’re looking for the next regulatory fireworks, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for a name where the hard part is behind it and the question is how well they sell the drug, or who eventually buys the company outright, this is the one to watch.
Replimune Group Inc. (REPL) — The Comeback Kid
I love this ticker, guys, I said it the first time and I’ll say it again. RP1’s BLA resubmission came after a second Complete Response Letter, and the FDA aligned with the company on the path forward back on May 29th. This stock jumps and reopens at entirely new levels — it’s an option trader’s name, plain and simple, which is exactly why I floated playing it with a call spread instead of straight stock. Baker Bros is in it, RTW is up nearly 9% on their position, and Tang Capital is sitting on a gain north of 125%. This is also my lowest-conviction name on the board, and I want to be honest about that — size this one like the binary outcome it actually is, because the chatter around it deflates fast when it doesn’t break your way.
Five names, five different stages of the same setup that just paid off on QURE.
Follow the money. Respect the date.
Using the same handful of tools — skew, smart-money flow, the catalyst calendar — and asking a fresh question of them every single day is how we stay creative as traders.
And the creative trader wins.
P.S., Joe Austin has spent four decades finding opportunities where Wall Street’s narrative diverges from reality. As a former hedge fund analyst, tech sector researcher, and portfolio manager overseeing billions in assets, he’s built a career on spotting what the crowd misses.
Now he’s teamed up with Wall Street veteran Marc Chaikin to unveil a new AI-powered tool designed to identify potential market winners before they become obvious to everyone else.
They’re revealing it for the first time on June 24, and charter access is limited. Click here to reserve your spot.
