May 15, 2005 Last week, it was 3 and 2 for biotech: three straight days higher, then two sessions that moved lower, with a net gain of almost 27 points in the Centient Biotech 200, the second week in a row that biotech has shown an increase. That wasn’t particularly spectacular neither tremendously good nor horrendously bad a kind of lull before the data storm that is the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, which began late Friday and continues through Monday. With a .83% gain, the CBT 200 showed some relative strength over the broad market, beating both the S&P 500 (down 1.48%) and edging out its high tech brethren on the Nasdaq (up .46%). Biotech is in the middle of its range for the year, but down about 8.5% since the end of last December. Breadth was almost dead-on even last week. We look at the big gainers for the week: Viropharma, Genta, Vertex and Renovis. More details...
