Moderna surges, Square to enter DeFi space, Intel in talks to buy GlobalFoundries

Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre reports on the day’s trending tickers.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to bring in Jared Blikre now for a look at some of our trending tickers today. And Jared, Moderna certainly catching my eye. The vaccine maker getting a nice boost on news it’s going to be added to the S&P 500. Give us the details.

JARED BLIKRE: That’s right. It’s going to join Tesla and all the people there, Apple, Amazon, et cetera. Let’s go to the YFi Interactive. This is just an incredible story. I don’t talk about this stock a lot because, well, it’s really Anjalee Khemlani’s wheelhouse. But the stock movement here over the last year– this is year to date, actually– up 167%. Over the last year, up 241%. And it just keeps on going.

And you can see some of the other leaders in the pharmaceutical space just up in [INAUDIBLE] right now. BioNTech, that’s actually up even more year to date, and over the last year, it’s up 205%. And also Novavax, that stock is up 4%. But as we remember, with Tesla, it peaked shortly after it actually joined the S&P 500.

Now the timing on this, they’re going to add it next week. And the reason it’s popping today is because index fund managers, people who manage ETFs and tack it to the S&P 500, they’re going to have to buy this stock. And in fact, they could be frontrunning that decision, depending upon how their prospectus is constructed.

I want to add that this is a stock that’s up 165% this year. I’m going to go to the NASDAQ because I want to show you that it is the leading performer, not by a little, by a lot. And let’s sort this by equal weight. There we go, Moderna up 167% right now. The closest competitor is Applied Materials. That’s up 50%. And just by way of reference, the current leader in the S&P 500 to date for this year is L Brands. And it’s up an even 100%. So when it joins next week, Moderna could be the best performing stock in the S&P 500.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, want to talk about Square because, I guess, it’s breaking into a new business. It’s building its platform out for a business to focus on decentralized financial services or DeFi. And this is a growing sort of controversial area. Yesterday, we actually had the CEO of WonderFi on, which is a DeFi company backed by Kevin O’Leary. But what can you tell us about what Square is doing.

JARED BLIKRE: Well, Jack– @Jack tweeted this earlier today. And I have this up on the YFi Interactive. Let me just pull this up. He said, “Square is creating a new business, joining Seller Cash App and Title, focused on building an open developer platform with the goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services. Our primary focus is Bitcoin. Its name is be determined.”

So there is not a lot to unpack from that, just kind of joining the gang in fintech and the DeFi space here. You look at what Square has done this over the last year, it’s up almost 100%, even though it’s largely…