About The Downtick

The GLP-1 drugs are the biggest business story in the world that most people only hear as a celebrity headline. Two companies fighting over a market measured in hundreds of billions. Prices falling in steps as patents crack, country by country. An entire economy of clinics, apps, insurers and unofficial sellers being built and demolished in real time.

Somebody should cover that like a beat. So that's what this is.

A downtick is a trade executed at a price lower than the one before it. One step down. That is the beat in a word, and it is why the masthead reads the way it does. This brief published as glp1.blog through its first six editions; same reporting, same corrections policy, new name.

Twice a week, five minutes: the prices, tracked and verified. The fight between Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the two companies that make most of these drugs, called like the title fight it is. And the ripple, what they are doing to food, fitness, insurance, and everything downstream.

We cover the United States and Canada on the same board, with the same rules: every figure carries the date we checked it and the method we used. US prices come first because it is the larger market. Canadian prices come second because the patents there expired first, meaning other manufacturers can already make cheaper copies, which makes it the one place you can watch what happens to a price after the exclusivity ends.

It's written by Travis, from Canada, which is useful for the second half of that and is not the point of the first.

One thing this is not: medical advice. We report the business. Talk to a licensed clinician about your health.

Questions, tips, or numbers we should check:[email protected].