CHEMICAL, DRUG STOCKS FALL, BIOTECHS JUMP

HURRICANES, HIGH OIL AND NATURAL gas prices, and broad-based worry about the U.S. economy hurt chemical company stock prices in the third quarter. Pharmaceutical stocks also suffered, but biopharmaceutical shares rose from the end of the second quarter. The decline in chemical stock prices follows a similar slide in the second quarter, but the downturn in pharmaceuticals is new. Biotech stock prices, overall, had been up in the second quarter. C&EN's index of 25 chemical company stocks dropped 3.4% to 186.4 (all indexes are 1992 = 100) by the end of the July-to-September period. Following the second-quarter decline and a slight increase in the first period, the chemical index at the end of the third quarter was down 9.4% from the end of 2004. In other areas, C&ENP's index of nine major drug companies finished the quarter at 351.4, down 3.1% from the end of the second quarter and off 2.0% from the end ...