What happened
Never underestimate the power of famous pundits to move a stock's price. That power was strongly in evidence on Wednesday, when a notable figure in financial media revealed he had snapped up shares of Moderna (MRNA 0.89%). In the wake of that announcement, the biotech company's stock price shot more than 10% higher for the session.
So what
This happy investor is Josh Brown, a high-profile financial writer, blogger, and CNBC commentator, who revealed that he'd bought Moderna stock at what he termed a "ludicrous" price of $125 per share. In doing so, he obtained the stock at a lower level than all of its daily closing prices thus far in 2022.
Image source: Getty Images.
In an interview that aired on CNBC, Brown asserted that Moderna has far more value than its recent share prices would indicate.
"This was a $500 stock that fell to $125," he said, "and to be frank, I think it's one of the most cutting edge, technologically exciting companies of all the publicly traded opportunities in the pharma/biotech/healthcare space."
Moderna, a top coronavirus stock that performed well in the more intense phases of the pandemic, has lost some of its luster since then. That's due in part to the declines in the numbers of both daily new COVID-19 cases and daily fatalities in recent weeks. Those numbers have fallen rapidly in many parts of the world as the omicron wave of the crisis recedes.
Now what
Moderna leaped to fame and fortune as a COVID-19 vaccine developer, and its widely distributed Spikevax remains one of only three COVID-19 vaccines either approved or authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration.
But the company is harnessing its mRNA-based technology to develop products to treat and prevent a range of afflictions, and as such, it has excellent potential to be far more than just a flash-in-the-pan coronavirus stock.
