Intrexon Corp XON shares witnessed a massive rise during mid-session on Tuesday, after opening flat. Though the company is scheduled to release its third quarter results on Thursday, that’s not the reason why traders got interested in the stock and drove it up suddenly. At the time of writing this, shares of Intrexon were up by over 10% for the day.

The Greenberg Effect

Mark Greenberg, a renowned and respected contributor of CNBC, discussed why Intrexon is a great stock on ‘Halftime Report’ early in the afternoon. As soon as Greenberg was done discussing the stock shares of Intexron started moving up rapidly. Traders on the Street also lapped up this opportunity and Intexron’s options also saw a significant increase in activity and the implied volatility shot up through the roof.

“[…] company went public a year ago, its run by R.J. Kirk, people either like or do not like R.J. Kirk. He is a brilliant man, I think he is very smart, he sold New River Pharmaceuticals, he ran that company, he ran Critical Data, sold them both for billions of dollars. What I really liked here is when I saw, here is a guy that has a lot of money, didn’t have to do anything with it. He invested $400 million of his own money in this business, took a 60% stake and on the deal, he bought 20% more stock” Greenberg said.

Greenberg went on to explain how Kirk has transformed the biotech industry and the past successes that Kirk has had show that the guy knows what he hi doing, even though to others Intrexon may seem like a risky proposition. Greenberg also highlighted that other major investors in the company comprise of who’s who of Wall Street including Dan Loeb’s Third Point LLC.

The only person who contradicted Greenberg’s view on the program was trader Steve Weiss. However, instead of pointing out flaws in the analysis provided by Greenberg, Weiss argued that Greenberg doesn't understand the working of biotech industry and that presence of well-known investors doesn't make a company successful.