For the $MRNA haters, I wrote this yesterday... The intismeran study was positive, so why did Moderna’s stock price plunge? When Wall Street meets a medical meeting, strange things can happen. This is especially true when investors were already expecting very big things to happen. The situation that Moderna (the stock, not the company) finds itself in at ESMO is what’s referred to by folks who sit in front of Bloomberg terminals all day as a “sell on the news event.” Stock prices often reflect future events and possibilities, and Moderna, which added $60 billion in market value just on the August intismeran press release, alone, had already priced in a lot of the therapy’s revenue upside. If we’re being totally honest, Moderna’s tripled stock price and $90 billion market value overpriced the most optimistic intismeran business case. By how much is debatable, but to use more Wall Street jargon, the stock had gotten way ahead of itself. So, that’s why Moderna’s stock price plunged 17% on Thursday when the intismeran data leaked. As this newsletter was put together, the stock was down another 1% Friday. That’s actually pretty good. “This was a positive trial, and a very important outcome for patients and the field,” Jedd Wolchok, director of the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine and an immunotherapy pioneer, told STAT on Friday. “I don’t quite understand what the reason for the disappointment was, but you know, I don’t pretend to be smarter than a biotech analyst.” This is not to say that the INTerpath-001 study leaves all questions answered. There will be debates. But investors on Wall Street and oncologists in Madrid are not always on the same wavelength. “Taking a step back, the data were very much in line with expectations,” said Mizuho health care strategist Jared Holz, who graciously spoke to STAT Friday while touring colleges with his kid. “From the Wall Street perch, this was always going to be a tricky set-up for the stock given a parabolic move over the past month coupled with a $100 billion market value coming into ESMO.”