Moderna’s Stock Rises Then Falls While United Airlines’ Stock Whipsaws

With the promise of continued support from both the central banks and the government earlier this week, combined with promising early findings from human trials for a vaccine for COVID-19, the biopharma firm, Moderna, had been riding high when their stock saw a 20 per cent increase in share price. This prompted an announcement on Monday by the company of its plans to sell new shares to raise up to $1.3 billion.

Health News

However, upon the release of the health news publication, the Stat report, on Tuesday, Moderna saw its stock fall 10 per cent at the close of trading for the day, continuing to fall in after-hours trading.

It’s understood that the drop in share value comes mainly as a result of Stat drawing attention to the failure by Moderna to back up claims that its vaccine produced an immune response in a number of volunteers.

Even with this drop, Moderna remains around 250 per cent up so far this year, giving the company a value of around $27 billion.

United Airlines

In other news, following the closing bell, United Airlines’ stock did a sudden whipsaw following its statement that there had been “a moderate improvement in demand” during the second quarter and that this included some overseas destinations as well as US-based trips.

Within an hour of opening on Wednesday, US stocks were rising as the Dow jumped 1.7 per cent, the Nasdaq Composite reached 1.9 per cent and the S&P 500 climbed 1.8 per cent.

All three of the major indexes managed to break their 3-day winning streaks. In the absence of any other forces affecting the market today, it seems investor optimism continues to drive the market, with the current rally believed to be largely led by the reopening of the economy, notwithstanding any fears of a second spike in the pandemic.

There’s been promising news on COVID-19 coming from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that the outbreak in the state is back to where it started and Connecticut is beginning to reopen some shops and restaurants, so oil shares also saw an increase with more driving now expected.