Moderna shoots higher on AI hopes
Moderna’s share price spiked up about 10% on Wednesday after Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said artificial intelligence has the potential to make personalized vaccines to detect and prevent cancer.
Ellison made those remarks at a White House event announcing Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure joint venture. Moderna, while not specifically named by Ellison, is a leading maker of mRNA vaccines and has been developing jabs to treat melanoma, a certain type of skin cancer. The drugmaker has previously said it used AI to develop individualized cancer treatments.
Larry Ellison of Oracle: AI will design mRNA vaccines for every individual person against cancer — making them robotically in 48 hours.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 21, 2025
"This is the promise of AI." pic.twitter.com/qSgVpodRLY
The AI hype also follows a $590 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a bird flu vaccine announced Friday after market close. The company, which had struggled to keep up with investor expectations after its Covid vaccine revenue dried up, has seen its stock price shoot up almost 12% in the past week.
This week has also seen an abrupt shift in options market activity. Typically, nearly twice as many puts (options that benefit from a fall in the stock price) tied to Moderna have changed hands relative to calls (the opposite of puts) over the past month.
But call volumes were higher than puts on Tuesday, the first trading day after news of the grant surfaced. In a stark reversal of recent history, nearly 3x as many bullish contracts have traded relative to bearish ones as of 10:35 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
Larry Ellison of Oracle: AI will design mRNA vaccines for every individual person against cancer — making them robotically in 48 hours.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 21, 2025
"This is the promise of AI." pic.twitter.com/qSgVpodRLY
The AI hype also follows a $590 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a bird flu vaccine announced Friday after market close. The company, which had struggled to keep up with investor expectations after its Covid vaccine revenue dried up, has seen its stock price shoot up almost 12% in the past week.
This week has also seen an abrupt shift in options market activity. Typically, nearly twice as many puts (options that benefit from a fall in the stock price) tied to Moderna have changed hands relative to calls (the opposite of puts) over the past month.
But call volumes were higher than puts on Tuesday, the first trading day after news of the grant surfaced. In a stark reversal of recent history, nearly 3x as many bullish contracts have traded relative to bearish ones as of 10:35 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
