BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Guilt by association

July 15, 1996 7:00 AM UTC

Last week's sell-off of bioscience stocks highlights the Street's blurred vision when dealing with the "tech" in "biotech". When Apple Computer's woes have a trickle down effect on its suppliers, selling Motorola shares may seem a reasonable thing to do. Ditto, if you don't like the prospects for Hewlett Packard's PC and printer business. The rub comes when the Street decides to tar all technology sectors with the same brush. If the market turns fickle on "growth stocks," some solid companies get driven down without justification - in this case, perhaps the entire biotech sector.

More maddening is that one never can tell ahead of time whether investors will dump all growth stocks, or will rotate from tech into biotech...