4Q Financial Markets Preview: Arrested development

The credit crisis took the steam out of biotech's promising third quarter runup and left the rest of the year's prospects hard to divine. But the initial picture was not pretty: the first three trading days of the fourth quarter wiped out what remained of biotech's gains in the third quarter.

The BioCentury 100 lost 9% last week, while the Amex Biotechnology Index (BTK) fell 8% and the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (NBI) was down 7%. Those performances lagged the 6% dip of the DJIA, and mirrored the 9% trimming of the broader NASDAQ index and the 8% taken off the S&P (see "Meltdown Chronicles" & "Biotech Bifurcation," A2). ...