Hillary Clinton’s September 21 Twitter criticism of Martin Shkreli following a drastic Daraprim price hike set off a whirlwind of debate over whether or not the government should step in with stricter regulations on drug prices. Understandably, these debates have spooked biotech investors, and the SPDR S&P Biotech (ETF) XBI is now down 42.8 percent in the past six months.
It’s been more than four months since Clinton’s original tweet, but the latest data from Ticker Tags indicates that the social media universe hasn’t forgotten about the issue. Ticker Tags monitors social media sites to identify trends by searching for words or phrases that are found together in social media content, such as tweets.
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According to the data, instances of tweets containing “Hillary Clinton+drug” and “price+drug” remain elevated as the primary season kicked off this week.
With prescription drug pricing still trending on social media, it won’t be surprising to see the topic continue to come up throughout the remainder of the election year. Biotech investors should be prepared for additional headline risk.
Disclosure: the author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.
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