Glass half empty

The skew against the smallest biotechs continued last quarter as investors fled risk and the increasing number of companies with problematic balance sheets. But even large caps didn’t provide much sanctuary as a group, as five of the 35 companies valued above $2 billion at the start of the second quarter were off 10% or more, and another nine were in negative territory, holding the group to a 1% gain, while the $1-$1.9 billion market cap range collectively eked out a meager 0.3% uptick(see “Results by Market Cap,” A2).

Nevertheless, 48 of the 100 stocks tracked by the BioCentury 100 index were up on the quarter, and a couple of the larger biotechs made big gains despite mixed or downright bad data (see “Index Performance”)...