{"id":38468,"date":"2025-11-23T12:23:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T12:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=38468"},"modified":"2025-11-23T12:23:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T12:23:25","slug":"moderna-is-most-shorted-stock-in-sp-500-as-americans-skip-jabs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=38468","title":{"rendered":"Moderna is most shorted stock in S&#038;P 500 as Americans skip jabs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=6daa949d-7aa5-47da-b1ab-ae59691cba9b\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Vaccine-maker Moderna has become the most shorted company in the S&amp;P 500, with its share price slumping to its lowest level since before the Covid-19 pandemic as people skip jabs.<\/p>\n<p>After months of anti-vax rhetoric from US health secretary<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/493ad765-b2c7-4b5e-8d5d-1638bb741fad\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\"> Robert F Kennedy Jr,<\/a> the number of Americans getting Covid shots is down about 24 per cent from this point last year, according to a November 21 report from Jefferies, an investment bank.<\/p>\n<p>Despite plenty of supply, analysts have said vaccine fatigue was contributing to lower <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/covid-19-vaccines\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\">Covid vaccination<\/a> rates in the past few months compared with 2024 or 2023.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not a huge surprise vaccinations have not picked up as they have in the last two years,\u201d said Seema Shah, medical director of epidemiology and immunisation for San Diego county.<\/p>\n<p>Vaccine shipments were delayed this year, prompting paediatric healthcare providers to wait to administer shots until supplies were stocked, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose [delays] definitely caused a slow pick up compared to the last two years,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>Boston-based <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/f6ea19e6-cb8f-452e-8d0d-4298e8f38c55\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\">Moderna<\/a> has been the S&amp;P 500\u2019s most shorted stock since the end of September, according to S3 Partners. Short sellers had about $622mn of unrealised profits in the company in 2025, S3 said. Moderna shares closed at $23.72 on Friday, down 43 per cent so far this year, and matching its share price in February 2020.<\/p>\n<p>When it joined the S&amp;P 500 index in July 2021, Moderna\u2019s fortunes were flourishing. That year, the US government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/67731161-9ca4-4074-a50b-878b163bb02d\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\">bought hundreds of millions<\/a> of Moderna Covid vaccines. Chief executive St\u00e9phane Bancel became a multi-billionaire. Moderna\u2019s 2021 operating margin was higher than Warren Buffett\u2019s Berkshire Hathaway.<\/p>\n<p>But Moderna has been unprofitable since 2023, well before Kennedy brought his vaccine scepticism to Washington this year. Its revenues have dropped by more than 80 per cent from 2021.<\/p>\n<p>At an investor day on Thursday, Moderna executives touted a turnaround starting in 2026. The company is expanding sales in markets outside the US and is racing to apply its mRNA technology to attack cancers.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with the Financial Times, Moderna\u2019s chair, Noubar Afeyan, said the short interest in Moderna\u2019s stock had not changed the company\u2019s behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are concerned about a lot of unknowns. I don\u2019t know that the shorting is adding to the unknowns,\u201d said Afeyan, who is chief executive of Flagship Pioneering, a Boston investment firm that founded Moderna.<\/p>\n<p>People should not forget the detrimental effects of Covid-19, he said, adding that more than 10mn people were living with the long-term symptoms of the virus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople have lost the narrative that they are essentially a source of infection for other people,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy should you follow traffic laws? You don\u2019t just put yourself in harm\u2019s way. This is a transmissible disease.\u201d And by not getting vaccinated, \u201cyou are not just an innocent bystander but a culprit\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The US health secretary is a long-standing vaccine sceptic. In June, Kennedy fired all the members of a top vaccine advisory committee, and two months later<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SecKennedy\/status\/1960742897201872969\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\"> limited the government\u2019s recommendations<\/a> for Covid shots. <\/p>\n<p>Last week, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/8cfdbdca-558c-413a-8f5d-809d9581a593\" title=\"\" data-trackable=\"link\">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, which is part of Kennedy\u2019s department, changed its website to say: \u201cStudies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Washington, Moderna has spent more than $1.2mn on lobbying already this year, a record amount for the company.<\/p>\n<p>Because of its exposure to vaccines, Moderna did not make a great acquisition target for giant pharmaceutical companies, said Myles Minter, an analyst at William Blair.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou need to see some pretty compelling oncology data\u201d for an acquirer to get interested in buying Moderna, he said. <\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title o3-type-body-highlight\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image o-teaser--opinion js-teaser\" data-id=\"6710e1da-c5ed-4f5d-9d59-814d17f7984d\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/6710e1da-c5ed-4f5d-9d59-814d17f7984d\" data-trackable=\"image-link\" data-trackable-context-story-link=\"image-link\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2493\/1402\"><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>While big drugmakers were looking to refill their product offerings, \u201cI\u2019m not convinced that declining Covid vaccine revenue is the way to fix that for a big pharma\u201d company, he added.<\/p>\n<p>For now, Moderna said sales to Australia, Canada and the UK would help it to increase revenues by up to 10 per cent next year. In 2027, a Pfizer deal to sell Covid vaccines to the EU expires, opening the European market for Moderna to compete.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, Moderna is hoping that its vaccines can generate enough cash to fund its cancer work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe see a turning point in our finances and we believe we have a line of sight to break even in 2028,\u201d said Jamey Mock, Moderna\u2019s chief financial officer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/6daa949d-7aa5-47da-b1ab-ae59691cba9b\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":38469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}