What's the Best COVID-19 Vaccine?

Welcome to StockUp, the investing newsletter that's enjoying this pleasant, novel phenomenon known as "good news." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [View this email in your browser]( Welcome to StockUp, the investing newsletter that’s enjoying this pleasant, novel phenomenon known as “good news.” This week, as the first COVID-19 vaccines find their way to the public, we’re looking at the biggest strength and weakness of each major contender -- and what that might mean for pharma investors. Plus, in the “nothing will ever be the same” department, we’ll discuss three ways the economy may have changed forever, and provide four useful tips for future parents expecting a new baby in 2021. — Nathan Alderman, StockUp Editor ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES Sizing Up the Most Promising Coronavirus Vaccines --------------------------------------------------------------- Less than a year after COVID-19 started wreaking global havoc, the first vaccines to protect against it are here. As high-risk patients and frontline healthcare workers begin to receive the initial round of inoculations, and the rest of us look forward to our date with The Best Needle Ever, Foolish investors may be wondering what the arrival of these new inoculations might mean for the companies that make them. Fool Sean Williams has dug into the four biggest players in this market, evaluating each shot’s strengths and weaknesses with an eye toward both their health and investing outcomes: Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) / BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX) - Strength: It’s the most effective of the bunch, protecting 95% of patients in clinical trials -- compared to 50% to 60% for most flu shots. Those kind of results could help stomp COVID-19 flat. - Weakness: Outside of super-cold temperatures, it quickly loses its potency, making this candidate a massive headache to transport and store. Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) - Strength: It’s very nearly as effective as the Pfizer/BioNTech shot -- 94% effective, and 100% effective at preventing serious illness -- with fewer and less severe documented side effects. - Weakness: Side effects may include an empty wallet, since this vaccine’s the costliest of the bunch per dose, at $25 to $37 per shot, compared to $19.50 for Pfizer and BioNTech’s offering. In a blessedly crowded market, that might lead doctors and insurers to choose a less costly option. Oxford University and AstraZeneca (NASDAQ: AZN) - Strength: It’s the cheapest, selling at cost -- just $3 to $4 per dose. (Seriously, Moderna, what’s your problem?) - Weakness: Weird efficacy results. Overall, tests showed the shot was 70% effective; not bad by itself, but pretty weak compared to its rivals. But the deeper you look, the stranger that data gets. Two full doses a month apart gave patients 62% effectiveness. But a half-dose up front, followed by a regular dose a month later, yielded 91% effectiveness. Right now, we still have no idea why. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) - Strength: Just one dose! All the others require two. You can vaccinate twice as many patients from the same number of doses. - Weakness: J&J hasn’t finished testing yet, and likely won’t until January. We still don’t know how effective this treatment will be, and it’ll have to compensate for its rivals’ big head start. For more on what these varying candidates can tell us about their makers’ financial prognosis, keep wearing your mask, washing your hands, and avoiding close indoor contact with others, and [read the rest](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Already subscribed to a premium service? [Click here]( to view your subscriptions. Not a member yet? [Click here]( to sign up! --------------------------------------------------------------- JARGON DECODER Same Store, Different Year They don’t call it “Wall Street” for nothing; the big banks there build bigger barriers of baffling terminology to keep regular Fools like you intimidated, underconfident, and ready to fork over your cash to a broker. Each week, Jargon Decoder translates one of those worrisome words or phrases into plain English, helping you get a leg up on the Wall Street Wise. This week’s term: comparable-store sales, also known as same-store sales or comps. This figure measures how well a retailer or restaurant really grew revenue from one year to the next. For most companies, revenue growth works pretty simply: If you make and sell more stuff from one year to the next, congratulations, your revenue grew! But retailers and restaurants have a way to muddle up that fairly straightforward picture. By opening new stores, they can boost overall sales, even if each individual store made less money and attracted fewer visitors. To figure out how well a retailer or restaurant really did in a given year, look instead at comparable-store sales, which calculates how sales grew or shrank only among the stores that were open both in the period being measured and the year-ago period. It leaves out any new stores that were built since then, giving investors a clearer picture of how the baseline business is holding up. If comps are shrinking -- especially while the company adds new stores! -- it could signal either that consumers are falling out of love with the business, or that the new locations are just eating into traffic at the existing ones. But growing comps suggest that the company’s doing a great job keeping happy customers coming back for more, and maybe even luring new customers to join them. --------------------------------------------------------------- CROSSIN' THAT RUBICON 3 Ways the Economy Has Changed Forever “We’re not going back to the same economy.” So said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell last November, and we think he’s onto something. The pandemic may have fundamentally changed how businesses work in the United States and around the world. Fool Ryan Downie’s found three trends that got kicked into overdrive when we all had to shelter in place: - Remote working. As a nation, large and especially fortunate swaths of us now know what it’s like to show up for work in comfy clothes with a pet on our lap, and you can’t make us go back. OK, fine, you can make us go back, and lots of us probably will, for the sake of free food and camaraderie and free food and the joy of in-person collaboration and also free food. But in the future, remote working will become a lot more common, and office space in big cities might get at least a little less valuable and in demand. - E-commerce. We were already buying tons of stuff online before the terrifying realities of a pandemic made that practice less “pleasantly convenient” and more “required to maybe not get sick or die.” Now, shoppers are more accustomed than ever to clicking their way to consumption -- the economic kind, not the 19th century disease kind -- and businesses have invested heavily to cater to that market. - Automation. When it wasn’t safe for humans to congregate to do various tasks, businesses invested in artificial intelligence and other tools that could do the job without spreading disease. (Except, of course, the occasional computer virus.) Unfortunately for a certain subset of fleshy human workers, the cost savings those companies found through automation mean there likely won’t be a return to the old way of doing business. Which stocks and industries could benefit from this seismic shift, and which might find themselves in its crosshairs? To get a better idea of what this new normal might mean for investors, [read the rest](. --------------------------------------------------------------- ALEXA, WHY DO I SUDDENLY CARE ABOUT THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE? [Smart Speaker] Not sure what to ask your smart speaker? Keep up with what's happening in the market by asking your Amazon Alexa or Google Home to "Play Motley Fool podcasts." --------------------------------------------------------------- LOOK, LOCKDOWN GOT REALLY BORING, AND... Having a Baby in 2021? 4 Financial Moves to Make Like the year 2020 itself, having a new baby could plunge you into a morass of sleepless nights, constant stress, and a parade of new and mind-boggling horrors (mostly at diaper-changing time). On the plus side, babies are super cute, can actually create considerable amounts of happiness, and are truly excellent to snuggle, which is a lot more than we can say for 2020. If you’re headed into the new year with a tiny bundle of joy and/or poop on the way, Fool Maurie Backman’s got four things you need to do right now to get ready. (Aside from bidding a fond, forlorn farewell to a good night’s sleep and a social life for the foreseeable future.) - Figure out your employer’s parental leave policy. Here at the Fool, proud moms- and dads-to-be get an amazing 16 weeks of paid parental leave to bond with our new little ones. (Why yes, [we are hiring!]( Make sure you know up front how much time, paid or unpaid, you can take off, and whether you can squeeze in any extra child-snuggling opportunities by squirreling away surplus sick days. - Apply for life insurance. You’ve got a little one to think about now. When you’re not frantically childproofing every inch of your abode, make sure that if something happens to you, they’ll be left with more than (hopefully) fond memories of you. - Boost your emergency fund. Fun fact about babies: They are shockingly expensive. Start socking away an extra cash cushion while you can. - Redo your budget. Did we mention the whole “shockingly expensive” thing? Diapers, clothes, toys, and medicine add up fast, so make some room in your budget to accommodate the whole additional human being who’ll be joining your family. Get more information to prepare you for having a baby -- ha! We’re kidding, nothing can prepare you -- when you [read the rest](. --------------------------------------------------------------- ALL SEWN UP FEATURED PODCAST [Industry Focus]( Has Stitch Fix Been Fixed? Up nearly 70% in the past week alone, Stitch Fix’s most recent quarter has many investors feeling like they may have missed out on this e-commerce clothing retailer. But is Stitch Fix really fixed? Or could the sudden stock rise a product of something else entirely? Join Asit Sharma and Emily Flippen as they discuss what the future could hold for Stitch Fix. [Subscribe on iTunes]( --------------------------------------------------------------- RENDER UNTO UNCLE SAM Quick Reads - [1040? A-OK!]( If you’re filing your taxes for the first time, consult our friendly, Foolish guide. - [Living that “sweatpants at 3 p.m.” life:]( 5 financial lessons from a year of remote working. - [Crush your debts, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of your creditors:]( If you’re starting 2021 with credit card debt, here’s how to pay it off by 2022. --------------------------------------------------------------- TRY NOT TO DO THIS Social Media Post of the Week [Image: 2 ways to Lose Money in the Stock Market Caption: While there's no guaranteed way to avoid losing money in the market, recognizing these common mistakes can save your portfolio from a lot of pain.]( [See all our Instagram posts!]( Join the 1,300,000+ people who follow us! [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( [LinkedIn]( We work fervently, fastidiously, and Foolishly to make sure all the facts and figures we publish in our emails are 100% accurate and up to date. Returns as of December 16, 2020. 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