00:01:53 · John Coogan
[00:01:53] S1: That's exactly what they said. And they actually did have some really promising results. But it's a very fascinating story because, obviously, curing cancer is a very broad term. Insane that the AI lab leaders try and collapse it down to just like it's going to be done. Clearly, it's like a game of cat and mouse with all these things. Like, there's always some level of cancer in your body that your body's naturally fighting off, then there's really bad cancer that no one can solve because it's metastasized so significantly. And then there's much more modern forms that if you catch them on time, you can fight back with both surgery, just removing the cancerous cells, the tumors, also drug treatments. There's bunch of great cancer drugs that are out there. Some of them are blockbusters, like Keytruda from Merck, which was actually used in concert with Moderna. So Moderna didn't say this is going to be used by itself. He said, we'll be using this in concert with Keytruda. And so, basically, this has been Moderna's core idea for the company going back to 2013. Stephane Bancel, the CEO, I don't know if he's the co founder CEO, but he did a TED Talk in 2013 where he said, like, We are going to be able to design patient specific drugs for cancer. And he was standing on stage being like, Guys, we're going to cure cancer. And everyone was like clapping at TED. And then three years later, they were calling him the Theranos because they were like, This is not going to happen. This is completely fake. Your company is really secretive. And then he started delivering, but it took a really long time. And the company was really secretive and would require people to sign NDAs to come in the building. All of that was sort of offset by the fact that they continued to deliver. And they actually did get up through a successful phase III trial with this particular drug. So, it's not a one shot solution. Of course, curing cancer is this broad spectrum. And so, the way it works is that scientists sequence a patient's tumor, identify mutations unique to their specific cancer, and then manufacture an mRNA vaccine that teaches the immune system to recognize and attack those cancer cells. And so, the treatment is actually administered alongside Merck's Keytruda, which I mentioned, an existing cancer immunotherapy drug.
00:04:07 · John Coogan
And the hope is that the combination can prevent cancer from returning after surgery and eventually work against many different types of cancer. So, the early results. The early results that they had sort of gestured towards in the Phase II was a forty nine percent reduction in relative risk of cancer recurrence or death compared to Keytruda alone. So, you're on the best in class because even when they do these studies, they're not say, hey, we want you to go cold turkey. We want you to go completely vanilla. They say, you can use the drugs that are already available. Will this be better than just the drugs that are available currently? So so they they had this forty nine percent number, and that's the important number to anchor on because phase three was gonna tell you, was it higher than forty nine when they did more trials or was it lower? And spoiler alert, of course, came in lower. That's why there's all the drama. But in August 2016, Moderna announced that its much larger phase three trial, which had eleven thirty seven patients, over one thousand cancer patients went through this trial doing Keytruda the Moderna treatment. They said our phase three trial succeeded, succeeded. But they didn't say the data behind it. They didn't say the number. They didn't update that forty one So everyone was like, this is incredible. They cured cancer. The stock moons. But on October 2, the detailed results leaked, which is crazy because they were basically embargoed and it was two days before Moderna was scheduled to present them. And in biotech, these presentations about the actual results are very precisely traded by hedge funds. It matters a lot. Yeah. And so they like, you shouldn't leak them, but a medical publication called Oncology Central apparently published an article containing the embargoed clinical data ahead of schedule. Screenshots circulated on X and Moderna stopped Not being choppy. 26% intraday, eventually closing down 18%. And it's not that they secretly failed the trial. It's not that they said they succeeded it and then the data came out and they failed. What actually happened was that the phase three did succeed, but the results weren't as spectacular as investors had hoped. Instead of the forty nine percent that I mentioned before, it was only forty two percent, which is still pretty good, but it wasn't good enough.
00:06:23 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Harari
It's great if you're a cancer patient, but it's not so good if you're an investor who's banking on 49% or maybe a beat, maybe an update. Hey, it's actually better than than we expected. And so, you can kind of understand how the market would react to that. Also, the Phase III trial showed that Moderna's treatment is really only starts to be effective after six months, it starts kicking in. So, if you have a really aggressive, fast growing cancer, it doesn't really help all that much. It's more for someone who has like a slow burn cancer that's sort of, they're fighting it off over the course of a year or two. That's when Moderna is going to help. And so...: Yeah. [00:07:02] S0: Somewhat disappointing results. [00:07:04] S1: Relative to the expectations. Right? Just didn't meet expectations. Not not a beat in the clean sense. And so that's all just a normal biotech story. But then it takes a bizarre turn because a fitness and gambling influencer, which is how he's described, named Shane Stouffer, who's better known as Togey, managed to time Moderna's crash almost perfectly. [00:07:31] S4: Nothing. Nothing. [00:07:32] S1: Flipping his entire position from calls to puts just hours before it plunged. And so we have some more information on Togi. I don't know if we have any videos that we wanna pull up to contextualize for the audience who Togi is because he's a true character in the modern online world. Do have any... [00:07:49] S0: I don't know if you could pull up just any video.
00:07:49 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Tyler, Kyle Schiller
[00:07:49] S0: I don't know if you could pull up just any video. [00:07:51] S1: I don't think we could. It's kinda dangerous. He's a he's a real wild card. Do you... [00:07:54] S2: I I sent in a video that I think is... [00:07:57] S1: Okay. Oh, it's clean.... [00:07:58] S2: For him. [00:07:58] S1: Okay. We'll play that video. And while we're pulling it up, give me the update on how you did in your first game of Call of Duty [00:08:03] S2: Modern Warfare for 14. Not great. [00:08:06] S1: 13 and 14. [00:08:07] S0: But, you know, [00:08:07] S2: first game, just getting the feeling. [00:08:09] S1: Okay. Okay. [00:08:10] S2: I'm feeling confident, though. [00:08:11] S0: Oh, We got a...... [00:08:12] S2: Time on this map. [00:08:13] S0: Can we get a camera on Jackson? [00:08:16] S1: Yeah. We need a camera on [00:08:17] S0: Jackson He'd put together [00:08:20] S1: Put together [00:08:20] S0: the fit [00:08:21] S1: all fits. [00:08:22] S2: Of the month. Fit of the month. [00:08:23] S0: And it's only [00:08:24] S1: Spin it around. Where are [00:08:27] S0: we? Here we are. [00:08:29] S1: Here we go. [00:08:29] S0: Alright. Zoom out a little bit. [00:08:31] S1: There we go. [00:08:31] S0: Okay. What do you got on, Jackson? [00:08:33] S5: I got the front Dale. [00:08:36] S1: And the back Dale. [00:08:39] S0: What's on the feet? Do we got boots on the feet? [00:08:41] S1: Okay. [00:08:42] S0: What do we got? [00:08:44] S5: I'm happy to be here. [00:08:45] S0: There we go. [00:08:45] S1: Fantastic. Looking great. [00:08:47] S0: Looking great. Thank you for that.
00:08:47 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Thomas Wright, Joe Lonsdale, Adam
[00:08:47] S0: Looking great. Thank you for that. [00:08:48] S1: So do we have that Togi video to contextualize for everyone? Can we pull that up? Okay. This is Togi, the fitness and gambling concert. [00:08:57] S3: Ever. Like, every day, I probably have, like, six, like, useful thoughts, and then the rest of it's just kind of like [00:09:04] S6: Give me an example of a useful thought you had today. [00:09:07] S7: No. Today was bad. [00:09:12] S1: What an entertainer. Anyway, on October 4, Togey, the man pictured in that video, was trying to speed up his stock video trading challenge, which is already a hilarious premise. He said he noticed people online acting bearish towards Moderna. Everyone was turbo bullish on every stock except $1 sign mRNA. Everyone and their mother could only talk about how overvalued it was and how good of a short it was. Then he decided to go against the crowd and bought Moderna calls. That night, he had a dream. Moderna cured cancer, and the stock went to $275 It's trading around $200 today. It was at almost $2.50 a little bit earlier. Making his portfolio, if these calls had hit, worth $11,000,000 This was his dream. After the dream, he asked Claude what it would take for Moderna to actually reach $275 That's when he said he learned about Moderna's cancer vaccine. Wait, for the first time, he just has this dream based on vibes based analysis. He's vibes trading. Over the next two weeks, the stock went up 25%, and Togi got worried that all the hype from the trial was already priced in. Then he had another dream. [00:10:34] S0: There we This
00:10:34 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:10:34] S0: There we This [00:10:34] S1: time that Moderna stock would surge 22%. I thought is a quote from him. He trust my original swap end of market on Friday plan. But when he woke up and checked his phone, Moderna was tanking, and his position was down nearly $200,000 Quote from Togey, My port down 200 ks almost had me fully in a panic, thinking maybe sell on the news was so obvious that they are selling days before the news. Originally, Togi had planned to flip his entire position from long to short on Friday, October 23, betting that Moderna's stock would crash after the trial results were released on Saturday, but the sudden drop convinced him to move up his plans. Quote, I got too scared that the pump would happen so soon that I'd have no capital left to flip the port short come Friday. But so he sold his position at a loss, freeing up roughly $500,000 to bet against Moderna by buying put options ahead of the trial results. Perfect timing for Togi. Shortly after, the results were leaked and the stock crashed by 26%, in Togi's own words, and the rest is some giga stroke of luck history. The news broke early somehow? Question mark. Question mark. Question mark. Question mark. The most likely outcome for all traders would be that I was destined for. Rock solid thesis blown up by some unlucky BS. [00:12:03] S0: Excuses. That's my quant. Lucky. Giga stroke of luck.