When they say Trump was good for pharmaceutical and biotech stocks, they weren’t kidding. During Trump’s first term, the President helped write the blank check required to speedrun COVID-19 vaccine development, trials, and distribution — $12B and seven months later, Operation Warp Speed brought the first vaccine to market and helped reopen the global economy. It’s a victory the Republican is reluctant to claim, given an increase in anti-vaccine sentiments and his decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization, but he might be faced with a repeat act in his second term.

• Biotech behemoth ModernaMRNA
  has become a speculative trade for investors betting on an emergent bird flu pandemic, with its stock jumping after reports of a bird flu death, a state of emergency in California, and a halt on poultry production in Georgia.
• To date, bird flu cases have been exclusively from animal to person, but with cases rising, a federal agency granted Moderna $590M to “accelerate” work on its bird flu vaccine trials — underlining the urgency to prevent a COVID-like disaster.

At world’s end: Moderna has already done much of the requisite work necessary to do a late-stage trial of its H5 and H7 avian flu vaccines, but the grant gave the biotech firm much-needed reprieve from a 20%+ decline in its stock last week, a product of the decision to cut its 2025 revenue forecast by $1B. With that, Moderna anticipates revenues between $1.5B—2.5B — far off the billions it raked in during the pandemic. But with the prospect of a new pandemic on the horizon, Moderna’s sickly $14.8B market valuation represents a notable risk premium — and one to watch as the threat of bird flu continues to march.