Is Biotech's Leadership Status Finally Cracking?

Over the past four years In North America, no sub-industry has performed as phenomenally well as biotech. This group, on an equal-weighted basis, has outperformed the MSCI World by a staggering 373%.  They haven't just beat the pace care but have lapped the entire field. Internet retail, second in terms of absolute performance over the past four years, has underperformed biotech by 212%!

Top 20 Performing Sub-Industries Over The Last Four Years

(Noteworthy...Of 138 sub-industries in the MSCI North America only 6 have negative performance over the past four years)

There are nine stocks that comprise the North American biotech sub-industry. The performance leader is Pharmacyclics which is up an astonishing 1,900%+ over the past four years. The performance laggard is Vertex Pharmaceuticals which is up "only" 82% (about 5% lower than the average stock in the MSCI North America during this time).

Individual Biotech Stock Performance Over The Past Four Years


Over the past month, however, biotech is down 4.3% and is the 8th worse performing sub-industry. Digging into the individual companies, we are starting to see technical breakdowns that have either not been seen since about 2011 or not at all during this advance in many of these stocks. The only positive technical chart is Amgen's (the second worst performer over the past four years). Absolute point and figure charts below: