7 June 2021: FDA approves Aduhelm, Biogen jumps 38%
On June 7, 2021 the FDA approved Biogen's Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm, despite its own advisory panel voting against it over doubts that it worked. Biogen shares jumped 38% that day. Then doctors hesitated, insurers balked at the price and Medicare limited coverage. Sales were tiny, and in 2024 Biogen discontinued the drug altogether, a long way from that first exhilarating trading day.
The lesson: Approval is not adoption; a product still has to convince the people who prescribe and pay for it.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Biogen at the start of 2020 → $505 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the latest year on the wheel. That is a loss of $495, while a plain index fund over the same years made $1,092.
What Biogen teaches: Companies whose old franchise is fading often bet everything on a single moonshot, and investors underestimate how often those binary bets fail.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $340 | $441 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $320 | $469 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $297 | $505 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Biogen? Every starting year and the full story →
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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