Inside Wall Street: 2010 Could Be Big for Small Biotechs

Biotechnology stocks pulled a huge surprise in 2009: They surged.

Few analysts expected the sector to handily outscore the rest of the market. Equally surprising was the robust performance of the young and small-cap crowd of mostly development-stage companies, which trumped their large-cap brethren. That was a switch from 2008, when the big guys outslugged the tykes, with the likes of Amgen (AMGN) and Genentech (which Roche acquired in 2009)leading the way.