Welcome back to Invested Early.

A cancer cell-therapy stock has more than doubled in three weeks, and it tacked on another 12.5% on Thursday as banks raced to raise their targets. Bitcoin climbed back above $72,000, its first trip north of $70,000 since early June, after Wednesday's White House crypto summit, and the entire mining complex went along for the ride.

The rest of the tape was softer: Walmart posted its slowest U.S. same-store sales growth in six years, and the Russell 2000 slipped 1.3% back below 3,000, though it remains up about 21% in 2026.

Here's what's inside today:

⚡ Why Bitcoin stocks move harder than Bitcoin
🧬 The cancer cell-therapy stock that doubled in three weeks
🏛 Track what Congress is buying and selling
📈 Top gainers (and biggest losers) from Thursday's session

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results.

Bitcoin rose about 13% across Wednesday and Thursday, from roughly $64,000 to $72,700, after President Trump hosted crypto executives at the White House and urged Congress to pass the CLARITY Act. Look at what that same two-day move did to the stocks built on top of it:

The gap is structural, and it comes from three mechanics stacked on top of each other.

The treasury reprices instantly. MARA held 35,577 bitcoin at the end of June, worth roughly $2.6 billion at Thursday's price, or around 60% of the company's entire market value. When Bitcoin moves 5%, the biggest asset on the balance sheet moves with it before a single new coin gets mined.

The costs barely move at all. A miner's power contracts and machines cost about the same at any Bitcoin price, so most of a price swing falls straight through to profits. That works in reverse too: MARA booked a fair-value loss of roughly $343 million on its coins last quarter, when Bitcoin was falling, and lost more than $600 million overall.

The share printer runs in the background. Miners and treasury companies fund coin purchases by selling stock, which grows the share count and magnifies moves in both directions.

We still think Bitcoin is a good long-term bet, and drawdowns like this year's have happened every cycle. Just go in knowing that a miner behaves like Bitcoin with the volume turned up, and a position sized for a stock can feel like a position sized for two.

Iovance Biotherapeutics closed Thursday at $8.99, up 12.5% on the day and up more than 120% from $4.07 at the end of July. The move started with an earnings report and kept going as Wall Street repriced the whole story.

The news: Iovance makes Amtagvi, the first FDA-approved T-cell therapy for a solid tumor. The treatment extracts immune cells from a patient's own tumor, multiplies them by the billions, and infuses them back to fight advanced melanoma. On August 6, the company reported record second-quarter revenue of $99.3 million, up 66% year over year and well ahead of the roughly $88 million analysts expected. U.S. Amtagvi sales of about $91 million grew 40% from the prior quarter, gross margin reached 56%, and management is reviewing its full-year guidance of $350 million to $370 million, with an update coming in the third quarter. The FDA also granted Fast Track status for the therapy in soft tissue sarcomas.

Why it matters: Cell therapy has produced plenty of great science and very few working businesses. Iovance is the first company to take a personalized T-cell treatment for solid tumors from concept to commercial scale, with more than 95 authorized treatment centers today and at least 110 expected by year-end. After the report, banks including Barclays, Mizuho, Baird, and Citizens raised their price targets, and Thursday's 12.5% pop came on the back of that momentum rather than any new headline.

The honest risk: Iovance still loses money, posting an adjusted loss of $0.11 per share for the quarter. At a $4.1 billion market cap, the stock trades near 15 times trailing revenue, so the guidance review needs to land well. Cash of about $304 million is expected to fund operations into the second half of 2028, but the company has leaned on stock sales before, and after a 120% run in three weeks, expectations are no longer low. That combination argues for small position sizes rather than chasing.

We're not fans of members of Congress trading individual stocks, but as long as the STOCK Act requires every trade to be disclosed within 45 days, those filings are free alternative data, and our partners at AltIndex organize all of it in one place.

Their Congress trading tracker breaks down every disclosed transaction, updated daily, making it easy to spot unusual activity, large trades, and repeat buying in specific names. Nancy Pelosi's page alone shows 63 disclosed trades since late 2021, with Nvidia, Apple, and Alphabet accounting for roughly 41% of her filings.

AltIndex also feeds congressional trades into its AI Score as one of more than 25 signals, alongside insider buying, hiring trends, and web traffic.

AltIndex is a partner, and Invested Inc. may earn a commission on referrals.

See what Congress is trading →

Here's where Thursday's biggest moves landed. The Russell 2000 fell 1.3% to 2,992 as retail earnings wobbled, but the crypto complex ran the other direction.

MARA led the gainers as Bitcoin crossed $72,000, and the trade lifted the whole complex: BitFuFu, Bitcoin treasury firm Twenty One Capital, and CleanSpark, our July spotlight, all gained 8% or more. Iovance extended its post-earnings run.

On the loser side, Thursday belonged to the strained consumer. Advance Auto Parts lost a quarter of its value after flat sales and a light revenue outlook, and apparel retailer Cato fell on shrinking margins, both echoing Walmart's cooling comps. LSI Industries beat estimates and still dropped 14% after flagging margin pressure into next year, EyePoint kept bleeding from Monday's failed eye-drug trial, and FuelCell gave back gains from a huge one-year run.

(Data: Yahoo Finance.)

Thursday brought a cancer cell-therapy stock that has doubled in three weeks on real commercial numbers, a crypto complex that moved twice as hard as Bitcoin's rebound, and an auto-parts retailer that lost a quarter of its value on a modest revenue miss. In this corner of the market, the reaction is usually bigger than the news, in both directions, so we'll keep showing you both sides.

We'll be back soon. Watching a name we should cover? Hit reply and tell us.

Cheers,
— Brandon & Blake of Invested Inc.