Wall Street shifts bets to big pharma as COVID-19 vaccine race progresses

Early signs of the shift came Wednesday, when positive data for one of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine candidates sent shares of the large U.S. drugmaker up more than 3%. Although the news had little effect on shares of Pfizer’s large rivals in the vaccine race, smaller peers Moderna Inc and Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc, both of which have previously shown promising COVID-19 data of their own, ended down more than 4% and 25%, respectively. For the week so far, shares of bigger players in the vaccine race, such as Johnson & Johnson and Merck , have also outperformed Inovio and Moderna.