The position was there before the headline: Moderna and the Torchcast Growth portfolio

The position before the headline

At the inception of Torchcast AI's published live Growth portfolio, Moderna ($MRNA) was the #1-ranked name in the book, with an entry price of $54.75. That selection was mechanical, generated from Torchcast's probabilistic forecasts rather than a manually constructed investment thesis.

And the oncology story was part of the forecast before the catalyst. When forecasting Moderna's future fundamentals, the system incorporated evidence around Intismeran, its personalized mRNA cancer therapy developed with Merck — including its clinical results, late-stage development program and potential path toward commercialization.

Then on August 19, Moderna and Merck announced that the Phase 3 melanoma trial for Intismeran met its key recurrence and metastasis endpoints. The market repriced quickly.

The numbers, as of the August 19 close

All performance figures below are as of the August 19 close. $MRNA has retraced materially since.

$MRNA closed at $174.38, up 218.5% from our $54.75 fill. The Growth portfolio contains 65 equal-weight positions, so $MRNA started at roughly 1.5% of the book and contributed approximately 3.4 percentage points to the portfolio's +9.7% return. The other 64 positions averaged roughly +6.4%, and 71% of the Growth portfolio was above its fill. Over the same July 27 to August 19 period, the S&P 500 returned +3.2%.

One important caveat: Moderna also received FDA approval for mFLUSIVA earlier in August, so the full holding-period return should not be attributed solely to the Intismeran readout.

One observation, not a validation

MRNA is one observation. It does not validate a forecasting system by itself. But it is a useful illustration of the question we are working on at Torchcast: can AI forecast changes in company fundamentals before the events that cause markets to reprice them?

The live portfolio, holdings and methodology are public →