President Donald Trump's investment account bought between $15,001 and $50,000 of Moderna stock on 2 March 2026, according to his disclosures. At that day's high of $54.94, the purchase was worth about 273 to 910 shares. Moderna closed at $225.00 on 9 October, 309.5% above that price, after the company and Merck reported on 19 August that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine met its primary goal in a Phase 3 melanoma trial. The buy came twelve days after the Food and Drug Administration reversed its refusal to review Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine, and more than three months before the agency's outside advisers voted 9-0 in favor of that shot.
What the filings show
The disclosures list three Moderna trades this year: the 2 March purchase, a second purchase of $1,001 to $15,000 on 17 March and a partial sale of $1,001 to $15,000 on 18 May, according to Quiver Quantitative, which reported them on 2 July. Benzinga dates the second and third trades 16 March and 1 July. Because the forms report only ranges, the position can be bracketed but not measured. By Quiver's 2 July count the stock was up roughly 49% from the first purchase and 46% from the second. The account also held Moderna before 2026: Benzinga's review of 2025 filings found five purchases and three sales.
FIG. 1 · FROM THE MARCH BUY TO $225
MODERNA (MRNA) SHARE PRICE, $ · MONTH-END CLOSES DECEMBER 2025 TO SEPTEMBER 2026 PLUS EVENT-DAY CLOSES · DIAMONDS MARK THE BUY, THE FDA STEPS AND THE CANCER READOUT
Event-day points (18 June, 18 to 19 August, 8 to 9 October) sit between month-ends.
← swipe to explore →The chart shows which event made the trade. The flu vaccine story lifted Moderna into the $60s and $70s, and the stock reached a 2026 high of $85.60 on 6 July, according to Schaeffer's, before giving back about 31% over the following month. When the FDA approved the shot on 5 August, the stock was trading below where it stood after the advisory vote. The move past +200% came on 19 August, when the melanoma readout lifted Moderna 177% in one session, and on 9 October, when it rejoined the Nasdaq-100 and closed at $225.00.
FIG. 2 · WHAT A $15,001 TO $50,000 LINE IS WORTH NOW
THE 2 MARCH 2026 MODERNA PURCHASE, BRACKETED · COST AT THE DISCLOSED RANGE VS VALUE AT THE 9 OCTOBER CLOSE · ESTIMATES · CLICK A ROW FOR THE METHOD
All values are estimates built from a disclosed range, not reported holdings.
The share price rose 309.5% from the $54.94 high to $225.00. Every dollar figure rests on a range: the gain is real, the amount is an estimate, and the true size is known only to the account manager.
On any reading the stake is small for an account that logged thousands of transactions; Ezana Echo's review of Trump's first-quarter 2026 filing counted 3,642 of them. The Trump Organization describes the holdings as fully discretionary accounts run by independent third-party financial institutions, with no advance notice of trades and no input into decisions, and the White House has said they sit in a blind trust, according to Benzinga. Nothing in the public record shows that Trump directed the Moderna purchases or knew of them. What the record does show is the sequence around them.
The February fight over the flu filing
Moderna filed for approval of its mRNA flu vaccine, then called mRNA-1010, in January. On 10 February it disclosed a signed by Vinay Prasad, the head of the FDA's vaccine center, which said the Phase 3 trial was not adequate and well controlled because its standard-dose comparator did not reflect the best available standard of care in the United States. Moderna said the letter raised no safety or efficacy concerns and conflicted with the agency's earlier written guidance. The shares fell nearly 9% in premarket trading the next day.
Eight days later the FDA reversed. After a Type A meeting, Moderna said on 18 February that the agency would review an amended application seeking traditional approval for adults 50 to 64 and for adults 65 and older, with a decision due 5 August. Politico, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported that the reversal followed a meeting at which Trump voiced frustration to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary over how the case had been handled; CNN reported that Trump berated Makary over the decision. The White House did not respond to Fierce Biotech's request for comment.
FDA will maintain its high standards during review and potential licensure stages as it does with all products.
— Andrew Nixon, HHS spokesman, via Fierce Biotech, 19 February 2026
FIG. 3 · EIGHT MONTHS, ONE FILING, THREE TRADES
FDA, TRADING AND MARKET EVENTS, JANUARY TO OCTOBER 2026 · SHADED WINDOWS MARK THE FDA STANDOFF, THE PRESIDENT'S ACCOUNT TRADES AND THE PANEL-TO-APPROVAL STRETCH · CLICK A PLAQUE FOR THE RECORD
Click any plaque for the record.
← swipe to explore →The agency that heard the case in June was not the one that had refused it. On 6 March Makary told staff that Prasad would leave at the end of April, and on 12 May Makary himself resigned, in a decision AP reported was made by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and approved by the White House. AP's account of his exit noted that the FDA had reversed course on the flu shot after Moderna threatened a formal challenge and sought White House intervention. The president's account had bought the stock between those events, weeks after the reversal and before any public sign of how the review would end.
Nine votes to none
On 18 June the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products voted 9-0 that the vaccine's benefits outweigh its risks for adults 50 to 64, and 9-0 again for adults 65 and older. The younger group's case rested on a Phase 3 trial of 40,805 adults at 301 sites in 11 countries, in which the shot showed 26.6% against a standard-dose vaccine for confirmed influenza-like illness and 47.9% against emergency visits, hospital stays and urgent care. For adults 65 and older, Moderna relied on an immune-response study against Sanofi's Fluzone High-Dose, met its noninferiority and superiority criteria across four strains, and agreed to a confirmatory study after approval.
FIG. 4 · WHAT THE FDA WEIGHED, BY AGE GROUP
THE EVIDENCE BEHIND EACH 9-0 VOTE · SAME = MET · PART = MET WITH CONDITIONS · NONE = NOT MET · CLICK A CELL FOR THE BASIS
Click any cell for the basis.
| Age group \ Test | Clinical outcome data | Comparator the FDA accepts | Traditional approval | Panel: benefit over risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adults 50 to 64 | SAME | SAME | SAME | SAME |
| Adults 65 and older | PART | SAME | NONE | SAME |
FDA staff briefing documents had flagged gaps, including no efficacy data for immunocompromised patients, very frail older adults or people receiving other respiratory vaccines at the same time. The documents still read as supportive: Moderna closed at about $55 on 16 June after their release and at $63.96 on the day of the vote. The FDA approved the vaccine, named mFLUSIVA, on 5 August, the first mRNA flu shot, with doses due at US retailers for the 2026-27 season and filings under way in the European Union, Canada and Australia.
The cancer trial that tripled the trade
The flu approval was the policy story; the cancer readout was the money. On 19 August Moderna and Merck said intismeran autogene, a vaccine built for each patient from the patient's own tumor, met the primary endpoint of in INTerpath-001, a Phase 3 trial of 1,137 patients with surgically removed high-risk melanoma, given with Merck's Keytruda. It is the first such success for an individualized mRNA cancer therapy. Moderna rose from $62.96 to $174.38, its best day ever, and Merck closed up nearly 13% at a record $152.20.
The rally kept going. On 9 October Moderna rejoined the Nasdaq-100 and rose 14% after The New York Times reported a public-private cancer vaccine effort led by the National Institutes of Health, closing at $225.00, up 663% for the year. That puts a company with $1.94 billion of 2025 revenue at roughly $90 billion of market value, and analysts are split: Bank of America raised its target to $200 with a Neutral rating, while the average target of $121 sits far below the price.
Moderna in Washington
FIG. 5 · SECOND QUARTER, YEAR ON YEAR
MODERNA LOBBYING LINES THAT MOVED BETWEEN Q2 2025 AND Q2 2026, $ · AS REPORTED UNDER THE LOBBYING DISCLOSURE ACT · CLICK A ROW FOR THE FILING
Each row is one reported line, not Moderna's total spend.
Moderna's reported lobbying on vaccine policy was roughly 2.4 times its year-earlier level in the quarter of the advisory vote, with a new firm reporting contacts at the White House. Lobbying is legal and disclosed; the filings show where the company put its effort, not what it achieved.
Moderna spent the year lobbying on the issues the FDA was deciding. A Moderna lobbying filing for the second quarter of 2026 listed $290,000 on vaccine policy and FDA vaccine approvals, up from $120,000 on vaccine policy in the comparable 2025 filing, according to Quiver Quantitative. Ezana's own lobbying data, drawn from Senate disclosures, shows a new outside firm on the account: Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck reported $80,000 for Moderna in the second quarter and listed the White House Office among the entities it contacted. DGSR, whose lobbyist William Dolbow was a senior adviser to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, reported $20,000 for contacts with HHS and Congress.
The disclosure gap
The rules that govern these trades are disclosure rules, not prohibitions. Under the STOCK Act, the president and members of Congress report securities transactions above $1,000 within 45 days, and only in , so the public learns of a purchase weeks after it settles and never learns its exact size. The main federal conflict-of-interest statute, 18 U.S.C. 208, exempts the president and vice president, and no law requires a president to divest or use a blind trust. Canada takes the opposite approach: cabinet ministers must sell controlled assets or place them in a blind trust within 120 days.
FIG. 6 · THREE OFFICES, FOUR RULES
WHICH RULES BIND WHICH OFFICE-HOLDER · SAME = THE RULE APPLIES · PART = APPLIES WITH LIMITS · NONE = DOES NOT APPLY · CLICK A CELL FOR THE BASIS
Click any cell for the legal basis.
| Office \ Rule | Trades reported publicly | Exact amounts disclosed | Must divest or blind-trust | Federal conflict statute applies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US president | PART | NONE | NONE | NONE |
| US member of Congress | PART | NONE | NONE | NONE |
| Canadian cabinet minister | NONE | NONE | SAME | SAME |
The practical effect is a lag that favors whoever trades first. The March purchases surfaced weeks after they settled, and a range of $15,001 to $50,000 spans a 3.3-times difference in exposure. Critics have alleged conflicts of interest since Trump returned to office, and a July CNN investigation reported that he had promoted more than 20 companies on social media days after buying their stock; the White House told CNN there are no conflicts of interest. For investors, the filings are most useful in aggregate: they show which names official portfolios are leaning into, after the fact.
Congress was in the stock too
The president is not the only office-holder with Moderna exposure. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, holds MRNA through family trusts: Disclosed Capitol lists purchases of $1,001 to $15,000 on 30 January, 24 February, 15 April and 30 June 2026, sales on 26 February and 3 August, and another purchase on 24 August. Khanna says that he and his wife do not trade stocks themselves. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican, reported a purchase and a partial sale of Moderna, each $1,001 to $15,000, on 19 August, the day of the readout; the report surfaced in September.
FIG. 7 · THREE OFFICE-HOLDERS, ONE TICKER
DISCLOSED 2026 MODERNA TRADES BY OFFICE-HOLDERS NAMED IN THIS ARTICLE · RANGES AS FILED · CLICK DOSSIER + FOR THE TRADE RECORD
Open a dossier for every disclosed 2026 trade.
Madrid, 24 October: what the price now has to prove
The next fixed test is the full INTerpath-001 dataset at the ESMO Presidential Symposium in Madrid on 24 October, presented by Georgina Long. The number that matters is the for recurrence-free survival. Moderna's management called a 20% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death the clinical benchmark; Evercore ISI says 35% to 40% would be clearly differentiated but argues the valuation already prices in more than that. The earlier Phase 2b trial showed 49%. For the flu vaccine, the test is uptake in its first season against established high-dose shots.
FIG. 8 · THREE READINGS OF 24 OCTOBER
EACH CHAIN RUNS FROM THE ESMO EFFECT SIZE TO A PRICE OUTCOME · BENCHMARKS ARE MODERNA'S AND ANALYSTS' PUBLISHED BARS, NOT EZANA FORECASTS
Read each chain left to right; the kill switch falsifies the re-rating.
The base case is that the full data land near the Phase 2b result and the re-rating holds, with Merck (MRK) the steadier way to own the same readout. The bear case is a hazard ratio above 0.80, which would leave a roughly $90 billion valuation resting on about $2 billion of revenue and shrink the president's paper gain with it. Either way, the disclosure question outlasts the trial: an account in the president's name bought Moderna after his FDA reversed course on its flu shot, and the public saw the trades only in ranges, weeks later.
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