Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA) is having the kind of trading day investors rarely see twice.
Shares surged as much as 150% on Wednesday and more than 74 million shares changed hands before the first hour was out, against a 10-day average of roughly 5.8 million for a full session.
That is by far the largest single-day gain in the company’s history.
The move came after Moderna and Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) said their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine succeeded in a Phase 3 melanoma trial.
The previous record was a 27.81% jump on Feb. 25, 2020, the week the market first understood that the Cambridge biotech might have a coronavirus vaccine.
The result matters far beyond one drug.
For Moderna, it provides the clearest late-stage evidence yet that its mRNA technology can work outside COVID-19.
That could force investors to rethink the company, shifting its perception from a declining vaccine business to a potential oncology platform.
Moderna Was A Post-Pandemic Wreck, Now The Story Is Changing
For five years, Moderna was the market’s standing reminder of what happens when a pandemic ends.
The stock fell from a record close of $484.47 in August 2021 to $22.28 last November, a 95% erasure that turned a household name into a value trap.
Then Wednesday rewrote the story.
Moderna shares more than doubled, adding about $38 billion in market value in the first hour of trading.
Shares of Merck also rose substantially, up 11%, marking the best session since March 2009.
The treatment, intismeran autogene, is designed around mutations found in each patient’s tumor.
In the Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial, 1,137 patients with completely resected stage IIB to IV melanoma received either Merck’s Keytruda alone or Keytruda combined with the personalized vaccine.
The combination met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and its secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival.
No new safety concerns were reported. This is not another promising laboratory result.
It is a successful late-stage trial involving more than 1,100 patients.
It is the first Phase 3 win for an individualized neoantigen therapy, and the first for any mRNA-based cancer treatment.
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and more than 1.5 million Americans were living with it as of 2023, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Nobody Saw This Before
Wall Street was not positioned for this.
According to Benzinga Analyst Ratings, Moderna carried a consensus Hold rating from 25 analysts with an average price target of $52.95 going into Wednesday.
Against the $158.34 the stock was trading at late in the morning, that average implies a 67% downside.
The highest target on the board is $110, set by BofA Securities in September 2024. The stock is trading 44% above the most bullish price target number any covering analyst has ever published on it.
The lowest is $18, from Leerink Partners on Nov. 21, 2025. That was the exact session the stock bottomed at $22.28.
The six most recent actions all raised price targets. Not one of them was an upgrade.
Analysts had been marking their numbers higher through the summer on the flu approval and a narrowing loss, in increments of five and 10 dollars, while leaving the ratings untouched at Neutral, Equal-Weight and Sector Perform.
Those are the moves of a Street adjusting a model, not one repricing a platform.
Even after Wednesday’s rally, Moderna remains 67% below its August 2021 record close of $484.47.
| Date | Firm | Price Target | Action | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 3, 2026 | Citigroup | $41 to $60 | Maintains | Neutral |
| Jul 21, 2026 | Goldman Sachs | $49 to $67 | Maintains | Neutral |
| Jul 8, 2026 | Morgan Stanley | $33 to $39 | Maintains | Equal-Weight |
| Jul 7, 2026 | RBC Capital | $38 to $45 | Maintains | Sector Perform |
| Jul 7, 2026 | B of A Securities | $34 to $38 | Maintains | Underperform |
| Jun 26, 2026 | Piper Sandler | $69 to $77 | Maintains | Overweight |
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