It was just another manic market day, at least for AstraZeneca.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shares of the British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company tumbled Thursday after it shared the surprising failure of its drug Wainua to meet its target in a recent clinical trial. AstraZeneca and Ionis Pharmaceuticals said<\/a> the heart disease treatment didn\u2019t outperform the placebo in preventing heart problems in patients with transthyretin-mediated amyloid cardiomyopathy (or ATTR-CM), a rare and potentially fatal disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was a blow analysts weren\u2019t expecting, and AstraZeneca\u2019s shares fell as much as 10.6% in London, its largest intraday plummet since 2017, per Bloomberg<\/a>. The company\u2019s New York Stock Exchange-listed shares ended Thursday down 5.7%.\u00a0<\/p>\n High Expectations\u00a0<\/p>\n AstraZeneca is \u201cmeant to be able to have exceptionally good trial design ability,\u201d Jefferies analyst Michael Leuchten wrote<\/a> in a note following the news. Even so, the market reaction seems outsized for a clinical trial failure and is just the latest evidence that the stock market is dealing in extremes and making headline-based decisions. Results short of perfection can send investors on a selling spree while positive ones spur massive rallies, especially ones related to AI. For instance, as AstraZeneca\u2019s stock was struggling, Micron\u2019s popped<\/a> after the announcement of billions of dollars in chipmaking investments, and stocks of AI infrastructure companies soared<\/a> on news that Meta plans to start manufacturing an in-house chip. Speaking of Meta, the hyperscalers are playing a daily game of \u201cthey love me, they love me not\u201d with investors.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, one company\u2019s bad news is another\u2019s opportunity:\u00a0<\/p>\n The stocks of AstraZeneca rivals Pfizer, BridgeBio Pharma and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which sell treatments for ATTR-CM, all initially gained on the news.\u00a0<\/p>\n BridgeBio ended the trading day up 15%, and Pfizer ticked up 0.83%. Alnylam reversed earlier gains, ending the day in the red.\u00a0<\/p>\n