If you weren’t paying attention — and most people outside of the biotech industry weren’t — the Cambridge company’s shares went nowhere after its initial public offering in late 2018.
Even after a punishing sell-off last week on concerns that future vaccine sales won’t be as robust as Moderna had indicated, the stock is trading at $237, giving it a market value of $96 billion.
Moderna’s top executives and early investors have become astoundingly rich, even after last week’s pounding, which illustrated just how transitory stock market wealth can sometimes be.
This bonanza is happening at tech and biotech companies across the local landscape: Vertex, HubSpot, Ginkgo Bioworks, Toast, Wayfair, and DraftKings, just to name a few of the big winners.
To cite one conspicuous example: Sales at European Watch Company have grown 25 percent a year over the past several years, according to Joshua Ganjei, general manager of the Newbury Street store, where the most expensive timepieces can easily top $100,000.
Massachusetts has long been one of the richest states based on incomes, as well as by a broader measure of wealth, called net worth, that includes stocks and bonds, real estate, pensions, and privately owned businesses.
US household net worth reached $134 trillion in June, up 22 percent since the final three months of 2019, according to the most recent Federal Reserve data.
“The stock market has always been a confidence barometer,” said Ernie Boch Jr., whose Boch Exotics auto dealership sells high-end nameplates such as Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche.
In the past two months, three penthouse units in the Mandarin Oriental on Commonwealth Avenue sold in two separate transactions for a combined $48.8 million.
For the first time in his 40-year career, the state’s three big housing markets — Boston, the suburbs inside I-495, and second homes on the Cape — are running hot at the same time, he said.
One business to feel the impact of a strong economy is the Urban Grape, a wine store in Boston’s South End.
“There is a lot of great company-building going on here,” said Douglas, who started the store with her husband, TJ, who is Black.
Now to the caveat I teased earlier: Even with all the lavish spending we’re seeing, the gains from a roaring stock market stay mostly with the rich.