STAT+: The Ozempic panic: Why a market frenzy over new weight loss drugs defies logic

There’s a specter haunting Wall Street.

It started in biotech, where companies making drugs for the obesity-related liver disease NASH saw their valuations crash on the assumption that GLP-1 weight loss treatments would cut them out of the market. Then the Ozempic panic came for dialysis firms, whose stocks fell about 20% in a single day on the news that Novo Nordisk’s medicine had delayed the progression of kidney disease in a study enrolling people with type 2 diabetes.

Now analysts from every sector are cranking out research notes on the disparate, dramatic, and often debatable implications of GLP-1 drugs’ growing popularity, said Jared Holz, a health care specialist at Mizuho Securities. Buy Bumble, sell McDonald’s. Short Pepsi, go long Louis Vuitton. Put your money in sectors that cater to a svelte and sated brand of consumer, and get out of the ones that rely on excess and compulsion.

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