What's Going On With CVS Health Stock?

CVS Health Corp CVS shares are trading slightly lower by 0.4% to $51.91 during Thursday’s session. Shares of insurers and pharmacy benefit manager stocks are trading lower in possible reaction to UnitedHealth’s quarterly revenue miss.

What To Know: Both UnitedHealth and CVS operate in overlapping sectors where investor sentiment often transfers. CVS, through its Caremark PBM and healthcare delivery services via Aetna, competes directly with UnitedHealth's Optum and UnitedHealthcare segments.

UnitedHealth’s higher-than-expected medical care ratio could signal rising costs and pressures that could affect CVS’s healthcare and insurance operations similarly, especially as both companies manage Medicare Advantage plans and navigate Medicaid redeterminations.

Additionally, UnitedHealth's missed revenue expectations might have heightened concerns about broader challenges in the healthcare industry, such as reimbursement rates, regulatory pressures or economic headwinds, which could also affect CVS.

Investors may extrapolate UnitedHealth’s struggles to CVS, fearing similar financial or operational risks in a highly competitive market with narrow profit margins and cost-sensitive customers.

Read Also: Retail Sales Disappoint, Jobless Claims Rise: Is US Consumer Losing Steam?

How To Buy CVS Stock

By now you're likely curious about how to participate in the market for CVS Health – be it to purchase shares, or even attempt to bet against the company.

Buying shares is typically done through a brokerage account. You can find a list of possible trading platforms here. Many will allow you to buy ‘fractional shares,' which allows you to own portions of stock without buying an entire share. For example, some stock, like Berkshire Hathaway, or Amazon.com, can cost thousands of dollars to own just one share. However, if you only want to invest a fraction of that, brokerages will allow you to do so.

In the the case of CVS Health, which is trading at $52.14 as of publishing time, $100 would buy you 1.92 shares of stock.

If you're looking to bet against a company, the process is more complex. You'll need access to an options trading platform, or a broker who will allow you to ‘go short' a share of stock by lending you the shares to sell. The process of shorting a stock can be found at this resource. Otherwise, if your broker allows you to trade options, you can either buy a put option, or sell a call option at a strike price above where shares are currently trading – either way it allows you to profit off of the share price decline.

According to data from Benzinga Pro, CVS has a 52-week high of $80.75 and a 52-week low of $43.56.