How to buy, sell and short Moderna shares

How to trade in Moderna shares

One way to trade Moderna shares is via derivatives trading.

Derivatives, such as CFDs, allow you to speculate on upward or downward share price movements without ever taking ownership of any physical shares. This is different to investing via share dealing, where you would be owning the underlying shares. Moderna does not pay dividends to its shareholders, but investors might benefit from an uplift in the company’s value over time.

Follow these steps to trade in Moderna shares:

Buying Moderna shares

1. Create or log in to your trading account
2. Search for ‘Moderna’ in the search panel
3. Choose your position size
4. Confirm the trade and monitor your position

Create an account with our partner, tastyworks, to trade Moderna stock in the US.

How to short-sell Moderna shares

You can short-sell on the share price by speculating on downward price movements. The benefits of short-selling include the ability to profit from falling share prices, and the opportunity to hedge against any existing investments or long positions.

Short-selling Moderna shares

1. Create or log in to your IG trading account
2. Search for ‘Moderna’ in the search panel
3. Choose your position size
4. Confirm the trade and monitor your position

Moderna’s live market price

Moderna shares are listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker MRNA, where it is a constituent of the Nasdaq 100. It is also listed on the MSCI US Equity Indexes.

Moderna’s stock has performed well since the company floated on the Nasdaq Global Select Market in December 2018, but the stock price soared after the biotech company had its Covid-19 vaccine approved by the FDA in December 2020. Between 21 February 2020 and 19 February 2021, Moderna’s share price increased by an enormous 858.52%.

In its 2020 full year results, the company revealed that it aimed to supply over a billion doses of its Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, generating revenue of approximately $18.4 billion.

What is Moderna’s business model?

Moderna’s business model is based around the use of mRNA technology to accelerate drug discovery and early vaccine development.

It was the first American firm to launch an effective vaccine for Covid-19. Since the Moderna vaccine was approved by the FDA in December 2020, the company has focused on expanding its distribution pipeline in order to meet global demand.

Moderna believes that mRNA could be used to create a new category of medicines. It is currently running discovery programmes into infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases and autoimmune diseases.

Moderna key personnel: who manages the company?

Moderna has filled its executive committee with an international team of medical professionals and corporate veterans.

The key players are:

How to analyse the Moderna share price

Trading on Moderna shares must always be based on a solid foundation of both technical analysis and fundamental analysis. It’s important to study Moderna’s financials and other factors that affect the business before using your capital to trade derivatives. For instance, any news of vaccine developments is likely to affect the company’s stock price, particularly during a global pandemic.

You should also analyse the health of the economy and its sectors, review news reports, study the competition, and gather all other relevant information before making a trading or investment decision.

• Technical analysis is concerned with chart patterns, technical indicators and historical price action
• Fundamental analysis is based on the fundamentals of a company, including its net revenue or profit and loss statements

Some popular technical indicators are:

• Bollinger bands, which demonstrate the range within which the price of an asset trades
• Moving averages, which can help to determine the direction of the current trend
• Average directional index (also known as the ADX indicator), which illustrates the strength of a price trend

Some popular fundamental metrics are:

• Earnings per share (EPS): determine the value attached to each share and whether the business is profitable or not by calculating Moderna’s earnings per share (EPS). To calculate EPS, divide Moderna’s profit by the number of outstanding shares
• Price-to-equity (P/E) ratio: outline how much you need to spend on Moderna shares to make $1 in profit. To calculate P/E, divide Moderna’s current market value per share by its EPS
• Return on equity (ROE): measure how much income the company makes on assets compared to shareholder investments. To calculate ROE, divide Moderna’s net income by stakeholder equity
• Dividend yield: compare the company’s annual dividends to the share price. To calculate dividend yield, divide the dividend amount by the share price, and then multiply by 100

Trading Moderna shares summed up

• You can buy or sell Moderna shares via derivatives trading with IG
• Derivatives enable you to speculate on share price movements without taking ownership of shares
• Buying or selling Moderna shares must always be based on a solid foundation of technical and fundamental analysis