Moderna logo seen in Warsaw, Poland, on April 9, 2025 (Jakub Porzycki/Getty Images)

Moderna rises after FDA grants limited approval for next-gen Covid vaccine

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said on Thursday that narrowing the eligibility while focusing on high-risk individuals could actually lead to more immunizations.

J. Edward Moreno

6/2/25 8:02AM

Moderna rose about 4% in early trading after the Food and Drug Administration granted limited approval for its new COVID-19 vaccine.

The FDA approved Moderna’s second-generation vaccine for all adults over 65 and anyone over 12 who has at least one risk factor for severe disease, the company announced on Saturday. Its first vaccine was previously approved for all people age 12 and older.

This is the latest sign that the Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is aiming to curb the prevalence of immunizations. The FDA has signaled it would narrow eligibility for Moderna’s first vaccine and HHS canceled funding to the company to develop a bird flu vaccine last week.

Moderna, which still makes most of its revenue from Covid vaccines, is down more than 36% so far this year, but investors have reacted positively to the FDA’s stance on the shots so far. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said on Thursday that narrowing the eligibility while focusing on high-risk individuals could actually lead to more immunizations.

According to the FDA’s estimates, the elderly and high-risk population is 100 million Americans, compared to the 40 million who were vaccinated in the 2024-25 season.

“If this administration is going to really try to push vaccination for people at high risk, I’m in because this is potentially a larger market than some of the confusion we have seen in the past and some of the skepticism that we have seen in the past,” Bancel said at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference.

Luke Kawa

Opendoor soars as co-founders Keith Rabois and Eric Wu added to board of directors, Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian appointed as new CEO

Opendoor Technologies is soaring after announcing that two of the online real estate company’s co-founders, Keith Rabois and Eric Wu, have been added to its board of directors. Rabois will serve as Chairman.

The company said Wu and Rabois’ VC firm are buying $40 million in Opendoor stock via a private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing.

In addition, Opendoor has poached Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian to serve as its new CEO after Carrie Wheeler resigned in mid-August.

“Literally there was only one choice for the job: Kaz. I am thrilled that he will be serving as CEO of Opendoor,” said Rabois.

The company touted that it’s “going into founder mode” with these additions in its press release, with lead independent director Eric Feder championing this injection of “founder DNA.”

That exact phrase, “founder DNA,” was used by Eric Jackson, architect of the initial rally and social interest in Opendoor, as he openly campaigned for these very two individuals to be added to the board.

This underscores how far the company is willing to go in embracing a new strategy of listening to its investors (particularly the most prominent one, it seems!) as management aims to engineer a fundamental turnaround in its business to match the optimism embedded in its stock price.

Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa

Three stocks power S&P 500 to fresh record closing high

Eighty-three basis points of today’s return in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, more than 2x its daily gain, were attributable to Oracle and the two leading US chip designers, Nvidia and Broadcom.

Oracle’s RPO Remaining Performance Obligations

What is an RPO, the number that drove Oracle’s giant share move?

Matt Phillips, Max Knoblauch7h

Luke Kawa

“Pokemon” trading cards skyrocketing in value and GameStop’s collectibles business taking off are two sides of the same coin

The Wall Street Journal’s fantastic piece “The Hot Investment With a 3,000% Return? Pokémon Cards” includes this vignette:

“...the cards caught fire among amateur investors during the pandemic. As some investors banded together to spark the GameStop meme stock mania, a more fringe group of traders, also stuck at home and armed with cash from government stimulus, began scooping up Pokémon cards.”

And the connection between “Pokemon” cards and the video game retailer is in fact even closer than that:

GameStop’s collectibles business played a big role in why it smashed Q2 revenue expectations! Sales in this segment exceeded $227 million, while the two analysts that provided forecasts had an average estimate of $170.4 million. Fiscal year to date, sales of collectibles make up 25.8% of its revenues, up from 16.4% at this time last year.

The company significantly expanded its footprint in the “Pokemon” trading card world in 2024 by launching in-store buying and selling of individual cards, and introduced “Power Packs,” which include one card graded at 8 or above by the Professional Sports Authenticator, in its most recent quarter.

As a 35-year-old man who still plays “Pokemon” (Nuzlockes are peak math + strategy entertainment!), thinks the release of “Pokemon Go” marked the peak for Western civilization, and considers Christmas 1998 to be the second-best day of his life because it’s when he got “Pokemon Red,” I personally view the outperformance of “Pokemon” cards as being indicative of the power of nostalgia coupled with a drop-off in child rearing by millennials, leaving more room for discretionary purchases and investments.

And the nostalgia business seems like a great place to be.

The Hot Investment With a 3,000% Return? Pokémon Cards

“...the cards caught fire among amateur investors during the pandemic. As some investors banded together to spark the GameStop meme stock mania, a more fringe group of traders, also stuck at home and armed with cash from government stimulus, began scooping up Pokémon cards.”

And the connection between “Pokemon” cards and the video game retailer is in fact even closer than that:

And the nostalgia business seems like a great place to be.

Luke Kawa

Oracle’s hyperscaler competitors lag after the cloud computing giant’s blowout revenue forecast

Oracle’s forecast for mind-blowing revenue growth through its fiscal 2030 is lifting most AI-adjacent stocks today.

However, the ones being left behind in this rising tide, falling or lagging well behind Morgan Stanley’s basket of AI tech beneficiaries (up 5.8% as of 12:22 p.m. ET), are its fellow hyperscalers.

Microsoft and Alphabet, which also have massive cloud divisions, are positive — but only just. Amazon, whose cloud revenue growth was deemed a disappointment relative to peers this quarter, is down 2.8%. Meta is down 1.2%.

This suggests, at the very least, that traders aren’t mapping Oracle’s outlook for Nvidia-like revenue growth onto the other major cloud players or one of their biggest customers.

Moderna rises after FDA grants limited approval for next-gen Covid vaccine

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Oracle’s hyperscaler competitors lag after the cloud computing giant’s blowout revenue forecast

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