Twenty-one biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies are amongthose included in the Standard & Poor's SmallCap 600 Index, a newindex designed to track performances of small-capitalizationcompanies.The index has a base period of Dec. 31, 1993, where it is set equal to100. It closed after Monday's opening day of the index at 95.78.Backtracking through the year, it registered a low of 89.22 on June22, Jon Diat, S & P's media relations manager, told BioWorld.The SmallCap Index is comprised of 600 U.S. companies that had atotal market capitalization of $181 billion on Sept. 30. The medianmarket capitalization is $267 million. That compares to a medianmarket capitalization of $3.5 billion for stocks in the S & P 500 and$920 million for stocks in the S & P MidCap 400 Index.Diat said while the small-cap companies haven't fared well this year,they historically have outperformed larger stocks, at least going back10 years."You're going to have bigger peaks and valleys when you look at asmall-cap index," he said. "Small caps tend to run in cycles."S & P, a New York company that's a division of McGraw-Hill Inc.,will license the index to various portfolio managers. Diat said anumber of investors were looking for a portfolio of smaller-companystocks.Companies included in the index must trade on either the New York,American or NASDAQ stock exchanges, have a trading history of atleast six months, trade at least $1 per share, have an annualized shareturnover of more than 20 percent, and have bid/ask spreads of 5percent of less. The stocks also must be representative of their groupand be liquid, or easy to trade.California biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies in the index areImmune Response Corp., SciClone Pharmaceutical Inc., WatsonPharmaceuticals, ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., Noven PharmaceuticalsInc., Immune Response Corp., Syncor International Corp., LiposomeTechnology Inc. and Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp.New Jersey-based companies are Roberts Pharmaceutical Corp.,Marsam Pharmaceuticals Inc., Zenith Laboratories Inc., A.L.Pharmaceutical and Liposome Co. Inc.New York companies are Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. andPharmaceutical Resources Co. Inc., while ImmuLogicPharmaceutical Corp. and Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., ofMassachusetts, are on the index. Also represented are Cephalon Inc.,of Pennsylvania, CytRx Corp., of Georgia, and NovenPharmaceuticals Inc., of Florida. n

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-- Jim Shrine

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