Real and Imagined: Bears

Put any two people together at any biotech meeting and the talk invariably turns to the "bear market" for biotech stocks and what can be done about it. Ironically, the bear market just may be arriving. The BioCentury 100 Price Level index shows that the sector carried a rising price cycle in this year's second quarter from the fall of 1995. But since hitting 1035.13 on April 3, the BC100 has trended steadily down. The index closed the quarter at 881.53, off 14 percent.

A large part of the bear mentality really has to do with the fact that biotech has been underperforming everything else in the stock market, as well as with the fact that the hot equity markets have finally, in a word, disappointed. The NASDAQ Composite rose 3 percent in the second quarter, while the S&P 500 rose 3 percent and the Dow Jones Industrials added 2 percent...