How to buy, sell and short Moderna shares

How to buy or invest in Moderna shares

There are two ways to buy Moderna shares – via derivatives trading or via share dealing (investing).

Derivatives, such as CFDs and spread bets, allow you to speculate on upward or downward share price movements without ever taking ownership of any physical shares. If you want to own the underlying shares, you can invest via share dealing. Moderna does not pay dividends to its shareholders, but investors will benefit from an uplift in the company’s value over time.

Follow these steps to trade or invest in Moderna shares:

How much would it cost to invest in Moderna?

Moderna is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market (NASDAQ), which makes it eligible for commission-free trading with IG. You’ll qualify if you have opened three or more positions on your share dealing account in the previous month. If you have opened two or fewer positions on your share dealing account over the previous month, a fee of £10 will apply.

If you don’t want to take ownership of Moderna shares, you can speculate on the share price with derivatives in order to:

• Get full exposure with a 20%-25% deposit on almost all of our tier one shares¹
• Trade spread bets without paying any tax²
• Hedge your positions with CFDs and offset any losses against potential profits

How to sell and short Moderna shares

You can sell physical Moderna shares with us, even if you bought them through another provider – by transferring them to us for free. Or, you can go short 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.

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

Buying or selling 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 deal shares or 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

Buying and selling Moderna shares summed up

• There are two ways to buy Moderna shares – derivatives trading and share dealing
• Derivatives enable you to speculate on share price movements without taking ownership of shares
• Share dealing enables you to own the underlying shares and receive possible dividend payments
• You can buy Moderna shares fee free with IG
• Buying or selling Moderna shares must always be based on a solid foundation of technical and fundamental analysis

Footnotes:
¹ Deposits on leveraged trades are 20%-25% for 99.14% of tier one shares (correct as of 1 June 2020). For more information, view our share trading margin rates.
² Tax laws are subject to change and depend on individual circumstances.