Moderna Stock Nearly Triples on Cancer Trial Data, Then Gives Back a Third of the Gain

Moderna's stock did something this week that doesn't happen to $50 billion companies very often. It nearly tripled in a single session, then gave back a big chunk of that gain the next day.

Here's the sequence. Moderna closed at $62.96 on Tuesday, August 18. On Wednesday, August 19, the company and Merck announced that their experimental melanoma treatment, an individualized mRNA cancer therapy called INTerpath-001, met its primary goal in a Phase 3 trial: reducing recurrence-free survival risk in high-risk melanoma patients when combined with Merck's Keytruda. The stock closed that day at $174.38, a 177% gain, according to thecryptobasic. It briefly touched $176.66 intraday.

By Thursday, August 20, the euphoria cooled. Shares fell as low as $136.35 and traded near $138.89 by mid-morning, a drop of roughly 20% from Wednesday's close, per thecryptobasic. That single-day pullback erased about $14.2 billion in market value, taking Moderna's implied market cap from around $69.6 billion down to about $55.4 billion.

A tokenized version of the stock traded on crypto platforms, called MRNAon, saw even wilder swings, spiking to an all-time high of $193.43 before crashing to $136.20, a peak-to-trough drop of nearly 30%, according to thecryptobasic. That token trades separately from actual Moderna shares on Nasdaq and reflects a much smaller, more speculative market. The two shouldn't be confused, and thecryptobasic was careful to note the token's market cap of roughly $358,000 is nothing like Moderna's corporate valuation.

What Actually Happened in the Trial

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel called the results "a pivotal moment for the field of cancer research," saying the idea of a personalized mRNA cancer treatment "has now moved from aspirational to real," according to the company's own statement. Merck, Moderna's partner on the therapy, echoed the framing.

The problem Jeffrey Tucker flagged in the Epoch Times: none of this is independently verifiable yet. The claims come entirely from a press release. No published, peer-reviewed data. No outside statisticians confirming the effect size. Corporate language like "transformative potential" and "critical unmet needs" is engineered to generate maximum market reaction while committing to nothing specific.

Moderna and Merck ran a real Phase 3 trial, INTerpath-001, and it did hit its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival, according to AP News. But investors bid the stock up nearly 200% before a single independent scientist got to check the math.

Wall Street's Verdict: Overpriced

The bank estimates that came out after the announcement suggest the market got ahead of itself. UBS raised its target to $150. Bank of America moved to $170, the highest on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs went to $120. Morgan Stanley, the most conservative, set its target at just $89, according to thecryptobasic. Google Finance's average analyst target sat around $82.62.

Every one of those targets was below Wednesday's $174.38 closing price. When the stock traded above what even the most bullish bank thought it was worth, a pullback wasn't surprising. It was close to inevitable.

The Flu Vaccine News Got Buried

Lost in the cancer-trial frenzy: the FDA also approved Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine this week, the first of its kind, for adults 50 to 64, with accelerated approval for those 65 and older pending further study, according to Fox News. The Phase 3 trial behind that approval included roughly 40,000 participants and showed a 27% reduction in flu cases compared to standard vaccines. Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel called it "geared to protect the elderly," noting it was found to be "25% to 30% more effective than the current flu vaccine."

Adults 65 and older accounted for 71% of flu deaths during the 2024-2025 season, according to CDC data cited by Fox News. An estimated 51 million Americans caught the flu that season, with about 45,000 deaths. A meaningfully better vaccine for se