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Trump unveils deal to expand coverage and lower costs on obesity drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump unveiled a deal Thursday with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to expand coverage and reduce prices for the popular obesity treatments Zepbound and Wegovy.

Known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, the drugs have soared in popularity in recent years, but patient access has been a consistent problem because of their cost — around $500 a month for higher doses — and insurance coverage has been spotty. More than 100 million American adults are obese, according to federal estimates.

Coverage of the drugs for obesity will expand to Medicare patients starting next year, according to the administration, which said some lower prices also will be phased in for patients without coverage. Starting doses of new, pill versions of the treatments also will cost $149 a month if they are approved.

“(It) will save lives, improve the health of millions and millions of Americans,” said Trump, in an Oval Office announcement in which he referred to GLP-1s as a “fat drug.”

Thursday’s announcement is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to rein in soaring drug prices in its efforts to address cost-of-living concerns among voters. Pfizer and AstraZeneca recently agreed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid after an executive order in May set a deadline for drugmakers to electively lower prices or face new limits on what the government will pay.

As with the other deals, it’s not clear how much the price drop will be felt by consumers. Drug prices can vary based on the competition for treatments and insurance coverage.

Obesity drugs are popular, but costly

The obesity drugs work by targeting hormones in the gut and brain that affect appetite and feelings of fullness. In clinical trials, they helped people shed 15% to 22% of their body weight — up to 50 pounds or more in many cases.

Patients usually start on smaller doses and then work up to larger amounts, depending on their needs. They need to stay on the the treatments indefinitely or risk regaining weight, experts say.

The medications have proven especially lucrative for Lilly and Novo. Lilly said recently that sales of Zepbound have tripled so far this year to more than $9 billion.

But for many Americans, their cost has made them out of reach.

Medicare, the federally funded coverage program mainly for people ages 65 and over, now covers the cost of the drugs for conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but not for weight loss alone. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, proposed a rule last November that would have changed that, but the Trump administration nixed it.

Few state and federally funded Medicaid programs, for people with low incomes, offer coverage. And employers and insurers that provide commercial coverage are wary of paying for these drugs in part because so many people might use them.

The $500 monthly price for higher doses of the treatments also makes them unaffordable for those without insurance, doctors say.

Trump tries to show he is in touch with cost-of-living concerns

Thursday’s announcement comes as the White House is looking to demonstrate that Trump is in touch with Americans’ frustrations with rising costs for food, housing, health care and other necessities.

“Trump is the friend of the forgotten American,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at Thursday’s announcement. “Obesity is a disease of poverty. And overwhelmingly, these drugs have only been available for people who have wealth.”

(Obesity rates actually are slightly higher for middle-income Americans than they are for those with the lowest and highest incomes, according to 2017-2020 data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

Kennedy had previously expressed skepticism about GLP-1s, but he was full of praise for Trump for pushing to help a broader segment of Americans have access to the drug.

Trump, who has a history of commenting on people’s appearance, asked the officials who joined him in the Oval Office whether they had used the weight-loss medications.

“Do you take any of this stuff, Howard?” Trump asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “Not yet,” Lutnick replied. “He’s taking it,” the president said of Steven Cheung, who is the White House director of communications.

The drug-pricing announcement came days after Democrats swept elections in races across the country. Economic worries were the dominant concern for those casting their ballots, according to findings from the AP voter poll.

Plan calls for phased-in price reductions

The White House sought to diminish price-reduction efforts by the previous Democratic administration as a gift to the pharmaceutical industry.

Trump, instead, consummated a deal that ensures Americans aren’t unfairly financing the pharmaceutical industry’s innovation, claimed a senior administration official, who briefed reporters ahead of Thursday’s Oval Office announcement.

Another senior administration official said coverage of the drugs will expand to Medicare patients starting next year. The program will start covering the treatments for people who have severe obesity and others who are overweight or obese and have serious health problems, the official said. Those who qualify will pay $50 copays for the medicine.

Lower prices also will be phased in for people without coverage through the administration’s TrumpRx program, which will allow people to buy drugs directly from manufacturers, starting in January.

Administration officials said the average price of the drugs sold on TrumpRx will start at around $350 and then drop to $245 over the next two years.

A Novo Nordisk spokesperson declined to provide details on their pricing changes.

Lilly said it will sell a starter dose of Zepbound for $299 a month and additional doses at up to $449. Both represent $50 reductions from current prices for doses it sells directly to patients.

Administration officials said lower prices also will be provided for state and federally funded Medicaid programs. And starting doses of new, pill versions of the obesity treatments will cost $149 a month if they are approved.

U.S. health regulators on Thursday separately agreed to dramatically expedite review of Lilly’s obesity pill, orforglipron. An FDA decision on Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill is expected later this year.

Doctors who treat patients for obesity say help is needed to improve access. Dr. Leslie Golden says she has roughly 600 patients taking one of these treatments, and at least 75% struggle to afford them. Even with coverage, some face $150 copayments for refills.

“Every visit it’s, ‘How long can we continue to do this? What’s the plan if I can’t continue?’” said Golden, an obesity medicine specialist in Watertown, Wisconsin. “Some of them are working additional jobs or delaying retirement so they can continue to pay for it.”

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AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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November 8, 2025

Trump says the US has secured $17 trillion in new investments. The real number is likely much less

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economic boom promised by President Donald Trump centers on a single number: $17 trillion.

That’s the sum of new investments that Trump claims to have generated with his tariffs, income tax cuts and aggressive salesmanship of CEOs, financiers, tech titans, prime ministers, presidents and other rulers. The $17 trillion is supposed to fund new factories, new technologies, more jobs, higher incomes and faster economic growth.

“Under eight months of Trump, we’ve already secured commitments of $17 trillion coming in,” the president said in a speech last month. “There’s never been any country that’s done anything like that.”

But based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website lists total investments at $8.8 trillion, though that figure appears to be padded with some investment commitments made during Joe Biden’s presidency.

The White House didn’t lay out the math after multiple requests as to how Trump calculated $17 trillion in investment commitments. But the issue goes beyond Trump’s hyperbolic talk to his belief that the brute force of tariffs and shaming of companies can deliver economic results, a strategy that could go sideways for him politically if the tough talk fails to translate into more jobs and higher incomes.

Just 37% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a September poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. That’s down from a peak of 56% in early 2020 during Trump’s first term — a memory he relied upon when courting voters in last year’s election.

Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, said the public commitments announced by Trump do represent a “meaningful increase” — but one that amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars, not trillions. Even then, that comes with long-term costs as countries might be less inclined to invest with the U.S. after being threatened to do so.

“It is a national security mistake because you’re turning allies into colonies of a sort — you’re forcibly extracting from them things that they don’t see as entirely in their interest,” Posen said. “Twisting the arms of governments to then twist the arms of their own businesses is not going to get you the payoff you want.”

Trump banking on foreign countries making good on promises

The Trump administration is betting that tariffs are an effective tool to prod other countries and international companies to invest in the United States, a big stick that other administrations failed to wield. Trump’s pitch to voters is that he will play a role in directly managing the investment commitments made by foreign countries — and that the allocation of that money starting next year will revive what has been a flagging job market.

“The difference between hypothetical investments and ground being broken on new factories and facilities is good leadership and sound policy,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

The White House said that Japan will invest $1 trillion, largely at Trump’s direction. The European Union will commit $600 billion. The United Arab Emirates made commitments of $1.4 trillion over 10 years. Qatar pledged $1.2 trillion. Saudi Arabia intends to pony up $600 billion, India $500 billion and South Korea $450 billion, among others.

The challenge is the precise terms of those investments have yet to be fully codified and released to the public, and some numbers are under dispute, potentially fuzzy math or, in the case of Qatar, more than five times the annual gross domestic product of the entire country. The White House maintains that Qatar is good for the money because it produces oil.

South Korea already has misgivings about its investment commitment, which is $100 billion lower than what the White House claims, after immigration agents raided a Hyundai plant under construction in Georgia and arrested Korean citizens. There are also concerns that an investment that large without a better way to exchange currencies with the U.S. could hurt South Korea’s economy.

“From what I’ve seen, these commitments are worth about as much as the paper they’re not written down on,” said Jared Bernstein, who was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Biden White House.

As for the $600 billion committed by European companies, that’s based on those businesses having “expressed interest” and having stated “intentions” to do so through 2029 rather than an overt concession, according to European Union documents.

Still too soon to see any investment impact in overall economy

So far, there has yet to be a notable boost in business investment as a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product. As a share of the overall economy, business investment during the first six months of Trump’s presidency has been consistently bouncing around 14%, just as it was before the pandemic.

But economists also note that Trump is double-counting and relying on investments that were initially announced during the Biden administration or investments that were already likely to occur because of the artificial intelligence build out.

For example, the White House lists a $16 billion investment by computer chipmaker Global Foundries. But of that sum, more than $13 billion was announced during the Biden administration and supported by $1.6 billion in grants by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, as well as other state and federal incentives.

Similarly, the White House is banking on $200 billion being invested by the chipmaker Micron, but at least $120 billion of that was announced during the Biden era.

‘The tariffs played a big role’

For their part, White House officials largely credit Trump’s tariffs — like those imposed on Oct. 1 on kitchen cabinets, large trucks and pharmaceutical drugs — for forcing companies to make investments in the U.S., saying that the risk of additional import taxes if countries and companies fail to deliver on their promises will ensure that the promised cash comes into the economy.

On Tuesday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla endorsed this approach after his pharmaceutical drug company received a three-year grace period on tariffs and announced $70 billion in investments in the U.S.

“The president was absolutely right,” Bourla said. “Tariffs is the most powerful tool to motivate behaviors.”

“The tariffs played a big role,” Trump added.

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October 16, 2025

These high-dividend-yielding stocks could see a rebound as rates decline, BMO says

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August 7, 2024

Jim Cramer: Merck is a buy after the drugmaker’s post-earnings dip — here’s why

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July 30, 2024

Cramer's week ahead: Earnings season kicks off after JPMorgan Healthcare Conference

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday told investors what to watch for on Wall Street next week, highlighting JPMorgan‘s market-moving health-care conference in San Francisco. Taking place from Monday to Thursday, the conference is one of the year’s largest gatherings of major industry CEOs where they reveal earnings guidance and updates on clinical trial research.

“The new year has started with a redistribution of cash out of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ and on to the sidelines,” Cramer said, pointing to health-care stocks as a particularly notable group that will likely be “propelled by what people expect to hear from the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.”

Cramer will interview several CEOs at the conference, starting with Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth on Monday. Cramer said he’s interested to hear how the company plans to get its groove back after cutting its dividend nearly in half this week. Cramer will also speak with leadership from Amgen and Medtronic, as well as the new CEO of Bristol Myers, Chris Boerner, whom he’ll ask about the company’s rigorous biotech acquisition plans.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Cramer will continue to interview the CEOs of major industry names, including Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks. Cramer said he’s particularly interested in the company’s diabetes and weight loss drug as well as its Alzheimer’s initiative. He’ll also speak with CVS Health CEO Karen S. Lynch to discuss the company’s ongoing transition from drug store to health-care provider. Cramer will also hear from the CEOs of Pfizer, Regeneron, Novartis, Abbott Labs and Cencora.

Thursday brings the consumer price index for December. Cramer said he thinks those hoping for soft figures will be disappointed. Cramer will also be tuning into CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, next week. The tech event will include commentary by leadership from Nvidia and Dell.

Earnings season kicks off Friday with reports from major banks including JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. BlackRock will also report, and Cramer said he thinks the company’s earnings could give investors a solid overview of the financial industry. He’ll also be paying attention to Friday reports from UnitedHealth Group and Delta.

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January 5, 2024

Single-stock ETFs tap into the market’s ‘gambling mindset,’ expert says. What investors need to know

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

More than a year after single-stock exchange-traded funds hit the U.S. market, risk-seeking investors continue to dive in.

Single-stock ETFs were first introduced in Europe in 2018. There are now nearly four dozen single-stock ETFs in the U.S., many of which track the so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla and Meta. Other names on Morningstar’s list of single-stock ETFs include Coinbase and Alibaba.

Collectively, single-stock ETFs have about $3.3 billion of net assets, according to Morningstar.

The growth of these single-stock ETFs, which are leveraged, is not particularly surprising, given that the Nasdaq is up more than 40% this year and big-tech stocks in particular are soaring. But they’ve likely earned a long-term spot in the market.

Single-stock ETFs “are here to stay,” said Bryan Armour, director of passive strategies research for North America at Morningstar. The strategy “taps into some of the gambling mindset that exists in markets,” he said.

More from ETF Strategist

Here’s a look at other stories offering insight on ETFs for investors.

Here’s what investors need to know about the growth of the single-stock ETF market and where it could be heading.

Where the single-stock ETF action is, starting with Tesla

There are 45 single-stock ETFs in total, according to Morningstar, from a handful of providers including Direxion, AXS, GraniteShares and YieldMax. These ETFs follow bull, bear or option income strategies.

The largest by asset size is the Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 1.5X Shares, which tracks Tesla. In July, it became the first of its kind in the U.S. to surpass the $1 billion asset mark.

The second-largest single-stock ETF by asset size is the YieldMax TSLA Option Income Strategy ETF, which had around $841 million of assets at the end of November, according to Morningstar.

In third place by asset size is the GraniteShares 1.5x Long NVDA Daily ETF, which tracks Nvidia and has soared in a year dominated by artificial intelligence optimism and the gains for chipmakers. It had about $245 million in assets at the end of November, Morningstar data shows.

To achieve their stated returns, leveraged and inverse ETPs often use a range of investment strategies. This can include swaps, futures and other derivatives as well as long or short positions, according to a FINRA explainer.

Expect more high-risk ETFs to hit the market

Rich Lee, head of program and ETF trading at Robert W. Baird & Co., expects to see more single-stock ETFs with an options overlay strategy and income component. YieldMax offers several of these ETFs that seek to generate monthly income by selling/writing call options on single company stock exposures.

There is continuous appetite for single-stock ETFs, and there will continue to be innovation, combining themes and exposures under the ETF wrapper, Lee said. “It’s a way to get quick exposure with leverage.”

While the number and assets within these ETFs has mushroomed, there have been duds. Single-stock ETFs tracking Nike and Pfizer — the former whose shares are close to flat this year and the latter whose shares are down 45% — among a few others, closed down. Some stocks are too bland to get investors riled up one way or another, Armour said. If an ETF can’t get enough traction, investment managers have to decide where to focus their resources, he said. It’s something for investors to keep in mind: What’s on the market today may not be in a few months.

Using single-stock ETFs is not a long-term strategy

Performance is all over the map. The Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 1.5X, for instance, had a total one-year return of about 12% through November, but it’s up about 148% year to date through Dec. 15, according to Morningstar. The GraniteShares 1.5x Long COIN Daily ETF, which tracks Coinbase, had a one-year return through November of about 206% and returned about 488% year to date through Dec. 15, according to Morningstar.

Not surprisingly, single-stock ETFs that take a bear strategy have seen negative returns of late.

But performance over time isn’t really the point.

The market for these vehicles is mostly traders and individual investors with an extremely high risk tolerance. There are other ways to gain leverage, without needing to pay fees in the 1% range, but for some more sophisticated retail investors who don’t have experience with leverage, a single-stock ETF can be a safer option, Armour said. “It’s just not a smart long-term strategy. It’s a very costly way to gamble in the stock market.”

The SEC’s warning to retail investors

These vehicles are appropriate for sophisticated retail investors and professionals that are willing to take a short-term view and are willing to monitor their positions daily, said Ed Egilinsky, head of sales and distribution and alternatives at Direxion.

“These are not buy-and-hold products,” he said. “If someone is looking to buy something and not pay attention to it, this is not the vehicle.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued an investor warning in August, reiterating the extra risks inherent to single-stock ETFs. “Because leveraged single-stock ETFs in particular amplify the effect of price movements of the underlying individual stocks, investors holding these funds will experience even greater volatility and risk than investors who hold the underlying stock itself,” the SEC said.

“You definitely have to understand what investing or hedging investment you’re trying to achieve with these products,” Lee said. “For a lot of these leveraged products, people are using it to get intraday exposure or use it for some sort of hedging.”

Which stocks could be targeted for the next hotly traded single-stock ETF?

Success is determined in part by assets, daily volume and scale, said Egilinsky. While he declined to be specific about where Direxion is next looking to add to its single-stock ETF lineup, he did say AI is a hot area. “We’re going to let this play out over time. It’s still in its infancy stages and we’ll continue to look for single stocks that make sense for us to bring to the market.”

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December 20, 2023

Free ChatGPT may incorrectly answer drug questions, study says

Harun Ozalp | Anadolu | Getty Images

The free version of ChatGPT may provide inaccurate or incomplete responses — or no answer at all — to questions related to medications, which could potentially endanger patients who use OpenAI’s viral chatbot, a new study released Tuesday suggests.

Pharmacists at Long Island University who posed 39 questions to the free ChatGPT in May deemed that only 10 of the chatbot’s responses were “satisfactory” based on criteria they established. ChatGPT’s responses to the 29 other drug-related questions did not directly address the question asked, or were inaccurate, incomplete or both, the study said.

The study indicates that patients and health-care professionals should be cautious about relying on ChatGPT for drug information and verify any of the responses from the chatbot with trusted sources, according to lead author Sara Grossman, an associate professor of pharmacy practice at LIU.

For patients, that can be their doctor or a government-based medication information website such as the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus, she said.

An OpenAI spokesperson said the company guides ChatGPT to inform users that they “should not rely on its responses as a substitute for professional medical advice or traditional care.”

The spokesperson also shared a section of OpenAI’s usage policy, which states that the company’s “models are not fine-tuned to provide medical information.” People should never use ChatGPT to provide diagnostic or treatment services for serious medical conditions, the usage policy said.

ChatGPT was widely seen as the fastest-growing consumer internet app of all time following its launch roughly a year ago, which ushered in a breakout year for artificial intelligence. But along the way, the chatbot has also raised concerns about issues including fraud, intellectual property, discrimination and misinformation.

Several studies have highlighted similar instances of erroneous responses from ChatGPT, and the Federal Trade Commission in July opened an investigation into the chatbot’s accuracy and consumer protections.

In October, ChatGPT drew around 1.7 billion visits worldwide, according to one analysis. There is no data on how many users ask medical questions of the chatbot.

Notably, the free version of ChatGPT is limited to using data sets through September 2021 — meaning it could lack significant information in the rapidly changing medical landscape. It’s unclear how accurately the paid versions of ChatGPT, which began to use real-time internet browsing earlier this year, can now answer medication-related questions.

Grossman acknowledged there’s a chance that a paid version of ChatGPT would have produced better study results. But she said that the research focused on the free version of the chatbot to replicate what more of the general population uses and can access.

She added that the study provided only “one snapshot” of the chatbot’s performance from earlier this year. It’s possible that the free version of ChatGPT has improved and may produce better results if the researchers conducted a similar study now, she added.

Grossman noted that the research, which was presented at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists’ annual meeting on Tuesday, did not require any funding. ASHP represents pharmacists across the U.S. in a variety of health-care settings.

ChatGPT study results

The study used real questions posed to Long Island University’s College of Pharmacy drug information service from January 2022 to April of this year.

In May, pharmacists researched and answered 45 questions, which were then reviewed by a second researcher and used as the standard for accuracy against ChatGPT. Researchers excluded six questions because there was no literature available to provide a data-driven response.

ChatGPT did not directly address 11 questions, according to the study. The chatbot also gave inaccurate responses to 10 questions, and wrong or incomplete answers to another 12.

For each question, researchers asked ChatGPT to provide references in its response so that the information provided could be verified. However, the chatbot provided references in only eight responses, and each included sources that don’t exist.

One question asked ChatGPT about whether a drug interaction — or when one medication interferes with the effect of another when taken together — exists between Pfizer‘s Covid antiviral pill Paxlovid and the blood-pressure-lowering medication verapamil.

ChatGPT indicated that no interactions had been reported for that combination of drugs. In reality, those medications have the potential to excessively lower blood pressure when taken together.

“Without knowledge of this interaction, a patient may suffer from an unwanted and preventable side effect,” Grossman said.

Grossman noted that U.S. regulators first authorized Paxlovid in December 2021. That’s a few months before the September 2021 data cutoff for the free version of ChatGPT, which means the chatbot has access to limited information on the drug.

Still, Grossman called that a concern. Many Paxlovid users may not know the data is out of date, which leaves them vulnerable to receiving inaccurate information from ChatGPT.

Another question asked ChatGPT how to convert doses between two different forms of the drug baclofen, which can treat muscle spasms. The first form was intrathecal, or when medication is injected directly into the spine, and the second form was oral.

Grossman said her team found that there is no established conversion between the two forms of the drug and it differed in the various published cases they examined. She said it is “not a simple question.”

But ChatGPT provided only one method for the dose conversion in response, which was not supported by evidence, along with an example of how to that conversion. Grossman said the example had a serious error: ChatGPT incorrectly displayed the intrathecal dose in milligrams instead of micrograms

Any health-care professional who follows that example to determine an appropriate dose conversion “would end up with a dose that’s 1,000 times less than it should be,” Grossman said.

She added that patients who receive a far smaller dose of the medicine than they should be getting could experience a withdrawal effect, which can involve hallucinations and seizures

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December 5, 2023

Pfizer to discontinue twice-daily weight loss pill due to high rates of adverse side effects

Pfizer on Friday said it would stop developing the twice-daily version of its experimental weight loss pill after obese patients taking the drug lost significant weight but had trouble tolerating the drug in a mid-stage clinical study.

The drugmaker observed high rates of adverse side effects, which were mostly mild and gastrointestinal, among patients. A significant share of patients also stopped taking the drug.

“At this time, twice-daily danuglipron formulation will not advance into Phase 3 studies,” the company said.

But Pfizer said it still plans to release phase two trial data on a once-a-day version of the drug in the first half of 2024, which will “inform a path forward.” The pharmaceutical giant will wait to see that data before deciding whether to start a phase three study on the once-daily pill, which Wall Street views as the more competitive form of the treatment.

Shares of Pfizer fell 4% in premarket trading Friday after it announced the trial results.

Still, the data on the twice-daily drug is a blow to Pfizer’s hopes to win a $10 billion slice of the booming weight loss drug market, which CEO Albert Bourla has said could grow to $90 billion. The company is betting on a successful weight loss pill to help it rebound from plummeting demand for its Covid products and a roughly 40% share price drop this year.

But investors have been pessimistic about Pfizer’s potential in the weight loss drug space since the company scrapped a different once-daily pill in June and proceeded with the less attractive danuglipron. Now, Friday’s data puts Pfizer even further behind the dominant players in the weight loss drug market, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, which are racing to develop more convenient pill versions of their blockbuster weight loss and diabetes injections.

Pfizer’s phase two trial on its twice-daily pill followed around 600 obese adults who did not have Type 2 diabetes. The trial examined the drug’s effect on weight loss after 26 or 32 weeks, at different dosage amounts ranging from 40 milligrams to 200 milligrams.

Like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic, Pfizer’s pill works by mimicking a hormone produced in the gut called GLP-1, which signals to the brain when a person is full.

Pfizer said the trial on danuglipron met the primary goal of demonstrating “statistically significant” reductions in body weight.

Patients who took the pill twice a day lost 6.9% to 11.7% of their body weight on average at 32 weeks, and from 4.8% to 9.4% at 26 weeks.

Meanwhile, patients on a placebo gained 1.4% of their body weight at 32 weeks and 0.17% at 26 weeks.

When adjusting for the difference between the weight gain observed in patients who took the placebo, Pfizer’s twice-daily pill caused 8% to 13% weight loss on average at 32 weeks and 5% to 9.5% at 26 weeks.

The company said high rates of adverse events were observed among patients in the study, with up to 73% experiencing nausea, up to 47% vomiting and up to 25% experiencing diarrhea. More than 50% of patients across all dose sizes stopped taking the pill, compared to roughly 40% among those on the placebo, according to Pfizer.

No new safety issues were observed, and danuglipron was not associated with increased liver enzymes like Pfizer’s other discontinued weight loss pill.

Data from the phase two trial will be presented at a future scientific conference or published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Wall Street’s expectations

The tolerability issues align with some analysts’ predictions ahead of the data release.

Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger wrote in a Monday note that the proportion of patients who discontinue treatment with Pfizer’s twice-daily danuglipron in the phase two trial would likely be higher than those who stopped taking a once-daily pill from Eli Lilly.

By comparison, 10% to 21% of patients who took Eli Lilly’s pill, orforglipron, in a mid-stage trial discontinued the treatment at 32 weeks due to adverse side effects, he noted.

Risinger said that’s likely because danuglipron’s total daily dose is far higher, which may cause more adverse effects. Patients on the highest dose size of Pfizer’s pill took 400 milligrams each day, while those on the highest dosage of Eli Lilly’s drug took 45 milligrams a day.

Pfizer’s phase-two trial also didn’t allow downtitration, or decreasing the dose of a drug over time once a specific response has been achieved. Eli Lilly’s mid-stage trial on its pill did.

There is hope that patients will better tolerate the once-daily version of danuglipron compared to the twice-daily form. Pfizer appears to believe a once-daily version of the drug could lessen gastrointestinal side effects, according to some analysts.

They pointed to Pfizer’s second-quarter earnings call, when the company’s chief scientific officer, Mikael Dolsten, suggested that a once-daily version may improve a patient’s tolerability of the drug, which could lessen the gastrointestinal side effects “that have been seen as limiting” danuglipron.

But the effects will be unclear until the mid-stage trial data is released next year.

Notably, the weight loss caused by twice-daily danuglipron appeared to fall short of analysts’ expectations.

Ahead of the data release, several analysts said Pfizer’s twice-daily pill has to be about as effective as Eli Lilly’s once-a-day pill to be competitive. That means at least a 14% to 15% weight loss, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Louise Chen told CNBC earlier this month.

Risinger also wrote in October that Pfizer’s danuglipron needs to show weight reduction in the “mid-teens” percentages to be considered competitive with Eli Lilly’s pill.

Obese or overweight patients who took 45 milligrams of Eli Lilly’s pill once a day lost up to 14.7% of their body weight, or 34 pounds, after 36 weeks, according to the company’s phase-two trial results.

Eli Lilly’s results appear consistent with the weight reduction caused by a high-dose oral version of Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide – the active ingredient used in the diabetes drug Ozempic and weight loss treatment Wegovy – but came over a shorter trial period.

More than 2 in 5 adults have obesity, according to the National Institutes of Health. About 1 in 11 adults have severe obesity.

Clarification: This story was updated to reflect that some weight-loss data was adjusted to include results from the placebo group.

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December 1, 2023

CNBC Daily Open: Are things about to get more difficult?

Up from No. 13 in 2022, Minneapolis, Minnesota ranked as the No. 2 most neighborly city in America.

S. Greg Panosian | E+ | Getty Images

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

What you need to know today

S&P 500 in correction
The S&P 500 index slipped into correction territory on Friday amid fears of a recession, closing 10.3% lower from this year’s peak on July 31. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 1.12% lower, and the Nasdaq Composite held 0.38% higher. Asia-Pacific markets kicked off the week on a mixed note ahead of key economic readings from the region. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.03% while the Kospi in South Korea was up 0.35%.

Hey, Big Spender
Inflation in September rose but consumer spending came in even stronger than economists expected, numbers from the Commerce Department showed on Friday. The core personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s key inflation measure, was 0.3% higher for the month, which was in line with the Dow Jones estimate. Even though prices picked up, personal spending continued, rising 0.7%, which was better than the 0.5% forecast.

A potential pause?
The Federal Reserve is widely seen leaving interest rates unchanged at the end of its two-day policy meeting this week, even as its preferred inflation indicator remains well above its 2% target. Earlier this month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said “inflation is still too high,” raising expectations that another rate hike may not be entirely out of the picture.

HSBC’s bumper profit
HSBC reported quarterly profit after tax of $6.26 billion, up a whopping 235% compared to the $2.66 billion from a year ago quarter. Profit before tax, for the three months ended September, rose by $4.5 billion to $7.7 billion, due to a higher interest rate environment.

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Investors have piled into the likes of Nvidia, Baidu and Alibaba as such tech companies have leveraged the use of artificial intelligence. But one portfolio manager says there’s one lesser-known stock that stands out.

The bottom line

Markets survived another brutal week and are looking to wrap up an even more tumultuous month, which saw the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes slip into correction territory.

A correction is when an index falls more than 10% (but less than 20%) from its most recent closing high. It’s called a correction because historically the drop often “corrects” and returns prices to their longer-term trend.

Investors have had to tackle everything from multi-year high Treasury yields, a busy earnings season to multiple inflation readings. A reading on personal consumption expenditures on Friday served as the latest evidence that American consumer spending remained healthy.

Core PCE rose 0.3% in September and 3.7% year over year, matching estimates from economists polled by Dow Jones. Personal spending increased 0.7%, however, surpassing estimates of 0.5%. PCE is the Federal Reserve’s most preferred inflation metric.

The reading came ahead of the Fed’s two-day policy meeting this week, at the end of which the U.S. central bank is widely expected to pause on hiking rates.

Morningstar’s chief U.S. market strategist Dave Sekera says the Fed is done hiking, and forecasts the central bank will start to cut the federal funds rate in the first half of 2024.

“As we forecast the rate of economic growth to slow and inflation to moderate, this allows the Fed to move to increasingly more accommodative language in early 2024 to prepare the market in advance for when they decide to begin cutting rates,” Sekera wrote.

A Fed meeting was by no means the only market-moving event investors were looking at. About 30% of the S&P 500 is scheduled to report earnings this week, among which Apple, McDonald’s and Pfizer will deliver quarterly results.

And if that wasn’t packed enough, market players will also be chasing the October jobs report due on Friday. It’s expected to show the U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs last month, according to consensus estimates from FactSet. That will follow a blowout 336,000 job additions from the prior month.

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October 29, 2023

CNBC Daily Open: The perfect storm

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 03: People walk by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at the start of the trading day on June 03, 2022 in New York City. A new jobs report released by the Labor Department this morning shows employers added 390,000 jobs in May. Stocks pointed lower ahead of the opening bell on Friday, putting indexes back into the red for the week. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

What you need to know today

S&P 500 in correction
The benchmark S&P 500 index slipped into correction territory on Friday on fears of a recession, closing 10.3% lower from this year’s peak on July 31. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 1.12% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite held 0.38% higher. European stocks also ended lower, with the benchmark Stoxx 600 closing down 0.8%.

Hey, Big Spender
Inflation in September rose but consumer spending came in even stronger than economists expected, numbers from the Commerce Department showed on Friday. The core personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s key inflation measure, was 0.3% higher for the month, which was in line with the Dow Jones estimate. Even though prices picked up, personal spending continued, rising 0.7%, which was better than the 0.5% forecast.

A potential pause?
The Federal Reserve is widely seen leaving interest rates unchanged at the end of its two-day policy meeting this week, even as its preferred inflation indicator remains well above its 2% target. Earlier this month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said “inflation is still too high,” raising expectations that another rate hike may not be entirely out of the picture.

One million share sale
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is set to sell one million shares of the bank in 2024. The plan raised concerns that Dimon could be contemplating retirement. Still, a spokesperson for the country’s biggest lender said the move wasn’t related to a succession plan, and that Dimon has “no current plans” for another sale.

[PRO] The S&P 500 correction is good news
The stock market tumbled into correction territory this week, sparking fears of more turmoil is ahead. But for disciples of Warren Buffett, a 10% drawdown for the the S&P 500 shouldn’t matter.