Moderna Vaccine Success Deepens Bite on Shorts to $1.85 Billion
Moderna’s Vaccine Success Takes $1.85 Billion Bite Out of Shorts
(Bloomberg) -- Betting against Moderna Inc., the most popular target in biotech, has proven to be an unprofitable trade for short-sellers.
On the heels of Monday’s positive vaccine results, bears have lost roughly $1.85 billion this year betting against the developer of a messenger-RNA vaccine, according to data from S3 Partners. In just the first few weeks of November they lost $790 million, said Ihor Dusaniwsky, S3’s managing director of predictive analytics. In all, about $2.13 billion of Moderna’s float is shorted.
Some short-sellers took heed ahead of the results. Over the past month, some 3.28 million shares were bought to cover, with 436,000 shares covered over the past week alone, Dusaniwsky said in an interview. Positive results for a similar shot from Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE were presented last week.
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