Stocks That Battle Cancer Were The Best-Performing Biotechs In January

Motif Investing is a new way for investors to own a collection of stocks in a certain "motif."

Through the website, an investor can easily identify which trends might be profitable and buy an allotment of pre-selected stocks in that trend, for a low price ($9.99).

The site also allows for the selected stocks and weightings in each motif to be changed by the investor.

The top returner (within the biotech space) for the month of January is the "Battling Cancer" motif.

Through January, the motif is up 8 percent, while the S&P 500 ETF is down 1.73 percent.

The motif owns a collection of 25 stocks that are battling cancer in four different sectors: Medical Devices, Mature Biotech, Pharmaceutical and Early Stage Biotech.

The highest-weighted stocks in the portfolio are:

1. Novartis AG (ADR) NVS at 25 percent

2. Celgene Corporation CELG at 24.1 percent

3. Pharmacyclics, Inc. PCYC at 10.6 percent

4. Exact Sciences Corporation EXAS at 4.5 percent

5. Tesaro TSRO at 4.1 percent

The best performers in the portfolio for January are:

1. Foundation Medicine Inc FMI at 109.1 percent

2. Pharmacyclics, Inc. PCYC at 34.9 percent

3. Bind Therapeutics Inc BIND at 29.7 percent

4. Kite Pharma Inc KITE at 28.2 percent

5. Celldex Therapeutics, Inc. CLDX at 22.5 percent

Image credit: Sergey Golyshev, Flickr