Ebb & Flow

Thanks in part to a 3.6 percent gain on Friday, the BioCentury 100 closed the week down only 6 percent. The spate of bad news that poured out over the course of the week made it seem worse than the numbers indicate. And anything looks good by comparison to the prior week's 14 percent hosing. Still, last week's 6 percent drop marks the sixth time this year the index has fallen by more than 5 percent in a week.

Making the Sunday night highlight reel were several big caps, including Applied Biosystems (ABI), which tumbled 41 percent on the week after warning of a slowdown in sequencer sales (see Cover Story); Immunex (IMNX), which tumbled 45 percent after two late-stage clinical setbacks; and bellwether Amgen (AMGN), which lost 9 percent of its value following a bearish sellside analyst comment. ...