🧬 Moderna Soars 177% After Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough

Plus, Bitcoin has its best week since 2024, the US-Canada trade war heats back up, and more...

Author

Maxwell Nicholson
August 23, 2026

TOP STORY
🧬 Moderna Soars 177% After Cancer Vaccine Breakthrough

☀️ Happy Sunday everyone!

🔴 Markets had their first red week in over a month as the US-Canada trade war heats up and fears rise that the Fed will increase interest rates…

📉 Across the indexes:

  • The S&P 500 fell -1.4%

  • The Nasdaq 100 fell -2.5%

  • The TSX fell -0.3%

🐝 In today’s Buzz, we’ll cover two big stories:

  • Moderna ($MRNA) soaring 177% in a single day after its cancer vaccine breakthrough, the biggest one-day jump by an S&P 500 stock in the last 25 years.

  • And Bitcoin ($BTC) best week since 2024 after Trump's White House crypto summit, bringing Strategy, Coinbase, and Circle along for the ride.

👀 But quickly, a few other big stories worth keeping on your radar:

  • ⚔️ The US-Canada trade talks officially collapsed on Friday, with the US imposing 50% tariffs on ~$20 billion of Canadian goods starting Saturday and Prime Minister Carney vowing to match them "dollar-for-dollar". Trump posted that Canada "wants the benefits of being a State, without being one." Whichever side of the border you're on, tariffs mean higher prices, which is bad news for those hoping for a Fed interest rate cut.

  • 🏦 Speaking of which, the Fed's July meeting minutes revealed many officials in favor of RAISING rates if inflation doesn't come down, briefly sending the 30-year Treasury yield to its highest level since 2007 (with odds of a September rate hike now sitting around 1-in-3)

  • 🛒 Walmart ($WMT) fell 9.2%, its worst day in over four years, after posting its weakest US sales growth since early 2020, with its CFO flagging an "arguably softer consumer environment" as shoppers trade down.

  • 🥇 Gold also hit ANOTHER record, closing the week at $4,660 (+5% this week alone)

🤿 But without further ado, let's dive into our top story: the biggest single-day stock surge in a quarter century, and the cancer breakthrough behind it…

💉 Moderna Doubles In a Day After the First-Ever Late-Stage Cancer Vaccine Win

😰 Coming into this week, Moderna ($MRNA) was one of the most beaten-down stocks in the entire market, down nearly 90% from its pandemic peak, with $170 billion in market value wiped out as its COVID vaccine business dried up.

🚀 But fortunes changed on Wednesday, when the stock surged 177% after Moderna announced that its personalized cancer vaccine (the first of its kind to ever reach a successful late-stage trial) helped prevent the return of melanoma (skin cancer) in a study of more than 1,000 patients who'd had their tumors surgically removed.

And it wasn’t just the markets that were excited… the American Society of Clinical Oncology's chief medical officer called the result "a monumental leap forward" for cancer treatment, with another medical leader saying:

❝

It's a home run, maybe even a grand slam. The results are pretty amazing.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Oncologist & former White House health advisor

🤔 Wait, How Do You "Vaccinate" Against Cancer?

💡 This isn't a vaccine in the flu-shot sense, it's custom-built for each patient. Unlike chemotherapy, which kills both healthy and cancerous cells, personalized cancer vaccines train the immune system to specifically target mutations found only on a person’s tumor.

🧬 Surgeons remove your tumor, the companies sequence its DNA, and an mRNA vaccine is built around up to 34 mutations unique to YOUR cancer.

😮 Earlier five-year data suggests the effect is big: the vaccine roughly HALVED the risk of the cancer returning, and cut the risk of it spreading by 55% with very limited side effects

🚀 Why the Market Went Wild

📈 Unsurprisingly, investors are extremely bullish. While trials were for skin cancer, Moderna is running trials in lung, bladder, and kidney cancer, with early studies in pancreatic and stomach cancer. Across the industry, more than 60 mRNA-based cancer vaccines are in development.

💰 And for a company that is seeing its COVID vaccine business dry up, cancer gives the stock new hope.

⭐️ As TD Cowen's Tyler Van Buren put it, it's "by far the most significant pipeline opportunity" the company has, and RBC's Luca Issi floated the dream scenario: this could become a therapy that works across MANY cancers, not just one.

❝

"This reflects a watershed moment for Moderna, in our view, effectively allowing the company to diversify away from infectious disease."

Alec Stranahan, Analyst at Bank of America

👀 This all sounds very promising, so now for the obvious next question - should you buy Moderna stock? Well, before we get into that, a quick word from our sponsor this week RBC Direct Investing.

PRESENTED BY RBC DIRECT INVESTING
⭐️ 50 Commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs.

🎯 GoSmart by RBC Direct Investing is an easy-to-use, commission-free way to get your money working harder for you. You can:

  • ✨ Trade for free: Unlimited commission-free trades on select ETFs, plus 50 additional commission-free trades per year on Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs, and $0 maintenance fees. 

  • 📲 Automate your investing: easily create a recurring investment into an all-in-one ETF. Set it once, let it grow. You can choose one of four all-in-one ETFs, or buy the stocks and ETFs you love commission-free. Contribute when and how you want by choosing how much and when to invest. The money will automatically move from your RBC bank account.

  • 📚 Save tax now and in the future: make the most of built-in tax benefits with the GoSmart TFSA, RRSP, and FHSA account options. Open as many accounts as you need and never pay account fees.

  • 📊 Invest on your terms: you can:

    • make changes to your recurring investments on the fly

    • invest your way without the maintenance fees

    • instantly transfer funds to and from your RBC bank accounts

    • access info to drive decisions: real time data at your fingertips to help you follow stock and ETF prices – at no extra-charge.

*See RBC Direct Investing’s Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter

TOP STORY CONT.
🐻 The Bear Case: The Math Doesn't Add Up (Yet)

📊 All right, let’s dive into the numbers behind this.

🤝 First off, the vaccine development is a 50-50 joint partnership between Merck ($MRK) and Moderna, so any revenue made from the vaccine is split with Merck (and, interestingly, Merck only jumped 12% this week).

👀 And according to Leerink analyst Daina Graybosch, one of the most respected voices in cancer therapeutics, even in her BULL case, where the vaccine reaches ~$10 billion in peak annual sales, this only supports ~$40B of added market value for Moderna and Merck combined.

😰 The problem is this week, Moderna added $45B in market cap in a single day, so the success of the vaccine is basically now fully priced into the stock.

💬 JPMorgan's Jessica Fye made the same point from a different angle: her model already assumed this trial would succeed (an 85% probability), so removing the remaining risk adds only 3% to her valuation.

🎰 This means Wednesday's 177% move likely wasn't about melanoma at all, it was the market betting this method works across MANY other cancers.

⚠️ And there’s good reason for caution around that assumption:

  • 🎯 Melanoma is the easiest target; its tumors are unusually mutation-rich, giving the vaccine lots of targets. The cancers up next (kidney, bladder, and especially pancreatic) are far less forgiving

  • 🏭 Every dose needs to be customized for one patient, one custom manufacturing run, at an estimated ~$300,000 per treatment. As a result, analysts estimate gross margins of 50-80%, well below typical blockbuster drugs

  • 📄 We still haven't seen the actual data, the full results arrive at a medical conference this fall (likely ESMO in Madrid, Oct 23-27).

🎢 So if you're tempted to buy Moderna, understand you're buying a stock that has already priced in years of success across cancers it hasn't proven yet, with the actual trial data still unpublished until October.

👀 The next real catalysts the trials beyond melanoma, and as Graybosch put it about the ultimate dream of using mRNA to PREVENT cancer: "That could be transformative. But that frontier is nowhere close."

🎯 That said, many analysts remain bullish, with Bank of America increasing its target from $40 to $170 and many other analysts also raising their targets significantly.

🌼 What the Blossom Community Is Doing

🤯 Before this week, trading volume of Moderna on Blossom was basically non-existent (~$66K), but this week it spiked to $8.7M, 130x the 2026 average and 4x more than the entire 2026 trading volume.

💸 Across the community, there was $6.2M in selling and $2.4M of buying, with 56% of the selling coming from people who hadn’t made a single trade since May 2023, silent holders who took the stock pop as a chance to sell.

👀 92% of the buying came from first-time Moderna investors, so the trade was almost perfectly symmetrical: people who bought the vaccine hype in 2021 sold to a new wave buying the cancer-vaccine hype this week.

🪙 Alright, let’s shift gears to other big story of the week, crypto’s big rally…

SPONSORED BY FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CANADA
🌟 More living. Less monitoring.

☀️ Summer is for road trips with the windows down, ice cream runs, and naps by the pool, not checking your portfolio every time the markets move.

🎯 If you manage individual stocks, you know what we mean. Thankfully Fidelity All-in-One Equity ETF is here to simplify your summer. It bundles a diversified mix of equities into one ETF and automatically rebalances for you.

💫 Less tinkering, fewer decisions and more time to enjoy the moments that make summer feel like summer.

*See Fidelity Investments Canada Disclaimer at the end of the newsletter

CRYPTO
🪙 Bitcoin Has Its Best Week Since 2024 After Trump's White House Crypto Summit

😴 Ten days ago, crypto was in one of its quietest stretches in years: Bitcoin had spent ten months in a bear market, down 53% from its $126,000 peak, with trading volumes drying up for months…

🚀 But this week, fortunes changed for crypto investors when Bitcoin surged 23%, its best week since March 2024, breaking above $77,000 for the first time since May. And it wasn’t just Bitcoin:

🤔 So let’s dive into what drove the surge…

🏛️ Catalyst #1: The White House Crypto Summit

🤝 On Wednesday, Trump hosted crypto's power players at the White House, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, the Winklevoss twins, and Kraken's co-CEO, calling on Congress to pass the long-stalled CLARITY Act, the landmark bill that would regulate most crypto tokens as commodities instead of securities.

💬 In Trump's words: "It's a very, very powerful structured legislation which will keep us ahead of China, keep us ahead of everyone else." He also declared the US had "ended the war on crypto once and for all", and reports suggest a sizable government purchase of Bitcoin was even discussed at the summit.

🗳️ The CLARITY Act faces a Senate procedural vote on September 15. It passed the House over a year ago and has been stuck ever since, which is exactly why the market treated Trump's push as real news.

💵 Catalyst #2: The Treasury Juiced the Bond Market

🏦 The same day, the US Treasury announced it would double its buybacks of long-dated government bonds (to at least $4 billion each, and from two to four per quarter starting in September). Yields fell immediately, with the 30-year dropping back from its recent two-decade highs, and the US Dollar Index sliding about 2%.

💡 Lower yields and a weaker dollar make Bitcoin more attractive, so these Treasury moves were great for crypto investors (with Tom Lee citing this as a major reason for the rally).

🚀 The Next Crypto Bull Market?

💬 Coinbase's Brian Armstrong went on CNBC after the summit with a big call, saying that crypto's bear phases have historically run about 370-380 days, and this one is right at that mark:

❝

"We're basically coming right up against that where people, you know, they're going to say, well, this one's about over. It's time for the next bull run in crypto… I think there's a good chance we're on the cusp of the next bull market for spot trading in crypto."

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase

📈 The momentum crowd agrees, Bespoke's Paul Hickey called the rally "historic," noting Bitcoin is trading more than 3 standard deviations above its 50-day average, momentum not seen since 2016.

⚠️ But not everyone is convinced. Citi points out that Bitcoin ETF flows, the steady institutional demand that powered the last leg up, "have stalled since the October 2025 liquidations, and their resumption is critical for a sustained rally." 

👀 Luckily, Sept 15 isn’t too far away, so we’ll see soon whether this rally is the start of a bull market, or a short-term blip off Trump’s comments…

FROM THE BLOSSOM COMMUNITY
⭐️ Featured Posts of the Week

👇 Click to see the full post!

RBC Direct Investing Disclaimer

GoSmart is a service offered by RBC Direct Investing Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada and is a member of CIRO and the CIPF. © Royal Bank of Canada 2026.

The standard commission fee will be waived for the first 50 trades you place in stocks and ETFs in GoSmart Accounts each year. If you place more than 50 trades in a year, combined across all GoSmart Accounts you hold, the standard commission fee will apply to those trades. Capped Commission-Free Trading applies per client, not account, and resets to zero (0) at the start of each calendar year. Any unused Capped Commission-Free Trades will expire on the last day of the calendar year, and will not carry over to the following year. Orders placed, but not filled, do not count towards your first 50 trades.

The commission fee detailed in the Commission and Fee Schedule as applicable to Stocks and ETFs will be waived for ETFs listed as eligible for commission free trading at the time an order is placed. The list of ETFs eligible for commission-free trading is not guaranteed and may change from time to time. The standard commission fee may be applied to ETFs not listed as eligible for commission-free trading at the time an order is placed. The inclusion or exclusion of any ETF under commission-free trading does not constitute a recommendation by RBC Direct Investing to purchase or sell such securities. RBC Direct Investing Inc. does not provide investment advice or recommendations regarding the purchase or sale of any securities. Investors are responsible for their own investment decisions.

If you place a trade in a U.S. denominated security, or receive an entitlement (e.g., a dividend) from an issuer of an U.S. denominated security, a foreign exchange transaction will occur and foreign exchange fees will apply. This means that the Canadian dollars you hold in your account will be converted to U.S. dollars or the U.S. dollars you receive will be converted to Canadian dollars to be held in your GoSmart account. This conversion occurs at the prevailing Foreign Currency Conversion Rate. The Foreign Currency Conversion Rate that appears on your trade confirmation and account statement includes the spread that RBC Direct Investing (or our affiliates) earn for performing foreign currency transactions for you. The spread is the difference between the rate we (or our affiliates) obtain and the rate you receive. The Foreign Currency Conversion Rate and the spread will depend on a number of factors, including market terms and conditions as well as the amount, date and type of foreign currency transaction. Foreign exchange rates and the spread is subject to change without notice. Please refer to RBC Direct Investing Commission and Fee Schedule for more information.


Fidelity Investments Canada Disclaimer

Source: Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, as at June 30, 2026; ticker symbol FEQT

Returns shown in Canadian dollars, net of fees.

Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees, brokerage fees and expenses may be associated with investments in mutual funds and ETFs. Please read the mutual fund or ETF’s prospectus, which contains detailed investment information, before investing. The indicated rates of return are historical annual compounded total returns for the period indicated including changes in unit value and reinvestment of distributions. The indicated rates of return do not take into account sales, redemption, distribution or option charges or income taxes payable by any unitholder that would have reduced returns. Mutual funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change frequently, and investors may experience a gain or a loss. Past performance may not be repeated.

Each of the Fidelity All-in-One ETFs (excluding Fidelity All-in-One Fixed Income ETF) has a neutral mix which includes a small allocation to Fidelity Advantage Bitcoin ETF® ranging between 0.5% and 3%. Additionally, if the portfolio deviates from its neutral mix by greater than 5% between annual rebalances, the portfolio will also be rebalanced. In the case of a Fidelity All-in-One ETF’s allocation to cryptocurrency, if the portfolio weight exceeds twice its neutral weight, the allocation will be brought back to its neutral weight, with any proceeds being reallocated to the other underlying Fidelity ETFs at their approximate strategic allocations. Such rebalancing activity may not occur immediately upon crossing that threshold, but will occur shortly thereafter.

The ETF/ETF Funds are subadvised by Geode Capital Management, LLC.

© 2026 Fidelity Investments Canada ULC. All rights reserved. Fidelity Investments is a registered trademark of Fidelity Investments Canada ULC.