How biotech stocks actually trade into their FDA decision. Each line is the mean price path of every trackable U.S. PDUFA in that year, indexed to 100 at T-120 (120 trading days before the decision) and followed through T+5. Built entirely from our own price history across 1,683 PDUFA events. Facts, not advice.
Every year, overlaid
Mean indexed price (T-120 = 100) for all PDUFAs each year. The gold dashed line is the decision day (T-0). The 2022–2023 biotech bear shows up clearly as a negative drift into decisions, while 2024–2026 show a strong pre-decision run-up that rebuilds toward the historical pattern.
The number that matters: run-up into the decision
Year
Events
Run-up to T-1
Peak (pre-decision)
At T+5
2020
182
+12.9%
+14.0%
+9.7%
2021
245
+7.3%
+7.3%
+4.8%
2022
224
−5.1%
+2.6%
−5.2%
2023
341
−3.8%
+1.7%
−6.1%
2024
322
+12.6%
+14.3%
+15.0%
2025
310
+13.0%
+13.3%
+12.3%
2026*
29
+22.4%
+25.8%
+26.9%
*2026 reflects decisions resolved year-to-date; the sample grows through the year. Values are the mean of the indexed price path across events, not a prediction for any single drug.
Mean run-up from T-120 to T-1 by year. The two down years (2022, 2023) coincide with the sector-wide biotech drawdown (XBI).
Each year on its own (with 25–75% band)
The shaded band is the 25th–75th percentile of individual events, so you can see the dispersion behind each mean line — the run-up is an average tendency, not a guarantee.
Current in-flight PDUFAs
Every upcoming PDUFA we track, indexed to 100 at its own T-120, plotted by trading days remaining to its decision. The dot marks today; the label shows ticker, decision date, and days remaining (e.g. T-19). This is where each name sits on its run-up right now.
How this is built
We take every U.S. FDA PDUFA decision from January 2020 to the present that we can match to a listed, trackable equity (1,683 of 1,699 events; the remainder were acquired or delisted). For each, we pull the daily closing price and align it to the decision date: T-0 is the last trading day on or before the PDUFA date, T-120 is 120 trading days earlier. Every path is indexed to 100 at T-120 and averaged across all events in the year. The in-flight chart anchors each upcoming event to its future decision date, so "today" lands at a negative offset. All prices and charts are our own; this page carries no third-party market-data feeds.
