31 Dec. 2022. With yesterday being the last trading day of 2022, it’s time for our quarterly and annual review of the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index or NBI, an indicator of investor sentiment in an industry based on science. As of yesterday, NBI is showing signs of life, rising somewhat from its low point for the year and since the end of the third quarter, but still down almost 12 percent since the start of the year.
Last year at this time we noted that NBI “returned to earth” by the end of 2021, declining from its high points in September. This year, NBI reached its high point for the year on 3 Jan., the first trading day of 2022, at 4,762. The index then lost ground, declining 29 percent to its low point in 2022 of 3,368 on 13 June. As shown in our third quarter report, NBI began to reverse some of those losses by the end of September, closing at 3,768.
In the last three months of 2022, NBI rose to its high point since January, reaching 4,419 on 2 Dec. Since then, the index declined somewhat, closing for the month, quarter, and year at 4,213. While that number represents an 11.5 percent loss for all of 2022, NBI gained 11.8 percent since the end of September.
NBI is calculated from the share prices of 273 biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies trading on the Nasdaq exchange. For comparison, The Nasdaq Composite Index, an indicator of investor sentiment for the overall technology sector, declined 11 percent for the year, while the broader Standard and Poors or S&P 500 Index declined more than 19 percent in 2022.
More from Science & Enterprise:
- Infographic – Biotech Index Q3 Rollercoaster
- Infographic – Biotech Index Continues Decline in Q2
- Infographic – Biotech Index Plunge Continues in Q1
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