Elon Musk SpaceX and Moderna hailed as Baillie Gifford’s trust cites ‘how lucky we are now at the start of the end of the pandemic’



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BAILLIE Gifford US Growth Trust praised the achievements of biotech firm Moderna and entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX venture, which revealed it had significantly outperformed in the first half of the year.

And he now sees “a chance that we are now at the beginning of the end” of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The £ 810million investment fund posted a net asset value return of 53.8 percent for the six months ending November 30. The S&P 500 Index returned 11.1% in pounds sterling.

Baillie Gifford US Growth noted that Moderna, which it has owned since 2018, is “one of the biotechnology companies that has been at the forefront of coronavirus vaccine development.”

Moderna is one of several players to have successfully completed a vaccine.

Confidence said: “After a long and dark year, we entered 2021 with light at the end of the tunnel. Countries around the world are starting to vaccinate their populations. The number of people whose immune systems are ready to fight the coronavirus is increasing every day. We must not be complacent, and there is still a long way to go, but there is a chance that we are now at the beginning of the end of the pandemic. We have science to thank for this. The development of vaccines has traditionally taken years. ”

He added: “Besides capital and will, modern science has been an important catalyst for this breakthrough … The coronavirus vaccine is Moderna’s first commercial product. Its approval has important cross-sectional reading for Moderna’s drug development platform more broadly. ”

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Looking at the big picture, Confidence said that “the pace of innovation is accelerating and spreading”, and that “this should be a fruitful environment for growth investors”.

Stating that SpaceX had “innovated at a breathtaking pace,” he added, “2020 was the year America sent astronauts back to the space station. SpaceX’s crewed mission was a first for a private company. Starlink, SpaceX’s high-speed broadband satellite service, is operational in beta, with more than 900 satellites orbiting Earth and providing the Internet to users. And in Texas, SpaceX quickly developed its Starship rocket, the vehicle it hopes will bring people back to the Moon and then to Mars.

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Between its launch on March 23, 2018 and November 30, 2020, the return on the net asset value of the trust was 185.7%. This compares to a return of 56.2% for the S&P 500 Index.



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