Plus, Novavax said its coronavirus vaccine was shown to be 89.3% effective at preventing the U.K. variant, GameStop is up again, and crypto Dogecoin rose as much as 800% this morning.
Stocks were lower to start Friday with the Dow slipping 150 points, or 0.5%. The S&P 500 slid 0.3%, while the Nasdaq fell 0.2%.
Johnson & Johnson shares are down nearly 4% after the company said that its single-dose coronavirus vaccine is 66% effective overall in protecting against COVID-19, though it appears to be less effective against variants of the potentially deadly virus. While the vaccine candidate is more effective than the flu vaccine, by comparison, it is far less effective than the Moderna, and Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines that are more than 95% effective. Still, the FDA has indicated that it may authorize a vaccine that’s safe and at least 50% effective. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine candidate was found to be particularly effective at stopping severe disease, preventing 85% of severe infections and 100% of hospitalizations and deaths. “This is a single shot that can be given easily, it protects completely from that which we fear, having to go to the emergency room or a hospital,” said Mathai Mammen, head of global research and development for J&J’s pharmaceutical division. “It’s going to change the nature of the disease.”
Elsewhere, Novavax shares have surged more than 69% this morning after the small biotech posted results on its own COVID-19 vaccine trial late yesterday. Novavax said that its vaccine was 89.3% effective in a Phase 3 study in the U.K., and 95.6% effective against the original COVID-19 strain, putting its vaccine in the same league as Moderna and Pfizer in terms of effectiveness. But the bad news came from Novavax’s Phase 2b study that ran in South Africa. Among HIV-negative patients in that trial, the vaccine demonstrated 60% efficacy in preventing the South African strain of COVID-19. “If is now clear that our economic, societal, and medical well-being will depend on second iterations of the current crop of vaccines,” said SVB Leerink analyst Dr. Geoffrey Porges in a note. “Within months, the protection conferred by the current vaccines could be limited to reducing disease severity, becoming effectively useless for establishing herd immunity, as many previously infected or vaccinated people will be re-infected.”
GameStop shares are up again. The stock is up more than 79% at the time of writing after Robinhood said it will resume limited trading of it and other previously restricted securities following outrage from investors and politicians alike. “The trading restrictions helped a bit but the rules will need to be refined such that it does not just restrict one class (i.e. retail) of investors,” said Amy Kong, chief investment officer of Barrett Asset Management. “At some point, like a house of cards, this will prove unsustainable.” CNBC’s Jim Cramer also said now’s the time to drop the GameStop trade. “Take the home run,” Cramer said. “Don’t go for the grand slam. Take the home run. You’ve already won. You’ve won the game. You’re done.”
Bitcoin spiked as much as 20% Friday morning to $37,900 after Elon Musk added #bitcoin to his Twitter bio. Bitcoin’s price action has been relatively muted since hitting an all-time high of $41,940 earlier this month before sinking sharply a week later. Much as the WallStreetBets subreddit has pushed GameStop and other shorted stocks higher this week, another subreddit group, SatoshiStreetBets, has led investors to push up the price of Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency inspired by the popular “doge” meme. At one point today, Dogecoin was up around 800%. As the price of the crypto has soared, Dogecoin has today become the most mentioned crypto on Twitter ever.
Amid this week’s retail investing boom, Apple and Google’s app stores have been overrun with users downloading Robinhood, Webull, Reddit, Coinbase and other trading apps, with Robinhood now the #1 most downloaded app in Apple’s app store. The jump in rankings for financial apps represents the massive interest among the general population in retail investing through such apps, and suggests the retail boom has gone mainstream.
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HyreCar Inc (NASDAQ: HYRE): HyreCar shares are up more than 4% this morning after the company announced yesterday new and expanded strategic partnerships with AmeriDrive Holdings and Cogent Bank’s Specialty Lending Unit to significantly increase car supply on the HyreCar platform in key markets. “HyreCar is now in a position to achieve its goal of being the nation’s leader in supplying on-demand vehicles for the mobility industry,” said HyreCar CEO Joe Furnari. “Our partnerships with AmeriDrive and Cogent will fortify the ecosystem for HyreCar to serve the gig-economy on a national scale. AmeriDrive has entered into agreements with significant vehicle supply partners that can provide over $65.0 million in assets to ensure supply. Our exclusive partnership with AmeriDrive further validates HyreCar’s platform and our ability to execute regardless of the difficult environment. In one of the most challenging years imaginable, we have been able to sustain a 50% growth rate with just over 3,000 cars by maximizing vehicle utilization. These partnerships will help us significantly increase vehicle supply to our expanded ecosystem while securing strong and sustainable growth in 2021 and thereafter.”