Investing in growth stocks can feel like a roller-coaster ride. For instance, at the beginning of the year, Ionis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: IONS) was trading at $52 a share. By April, the stock was up to $86 a share. And now it's back down to $59. That's a fair amount of volatility! Individual stocks can and do move up and down, sometimes as much as 10% (or more) in a day -- but it's probably a bad idea to follow the market so closely. As long as the company's numbers continue to rise and impress, its stock price will do the same. So let's take a look at what's important at Ionis.
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Suppose you are the owner of a mid-sized biotech company, valued at less than $10 billion. How many drugs would you imagine are in your pipeline? Maybe three or four, if the drugs are billion-dollar candidates. So it's kind of shocking to see how many drugs Ionis Pharma has in development: three in the marketplace, and 26 molecules in the pipeline.