The second quarter of 2009 was filled with gains and plenty of plain. After looking at the quarter’s winners and losers, one thing is obvious, biotechs can make or break your portfolio.

Sometimes the best way to see where you are going is to look where you have been. Of course every financial commentator always covers his backside by telling you “past performance is not an indication of future returns,” just as he whips out charts of historic action.

With the second quarter in the history books, we can learn who were the winners and the losers and work to uncover any important patterns or indicators. The results may be surprising.

I will start with the top three gainers, all listed on the Nasdaq exchange.

Dendreon (NASDAQ:DNDN) wins top honors with a quarterly gain of 495%. The biotech company that was trading for just $2.55 per share in March is now

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Still keeping my eye on the Sequenom (SQNM) – but the whole idea with this name was to avoid the small cap “biotech” bipolar experience (either a huge win or a huge loss). Unfortunately, this is what this has now turned to, a coin flip. Probably the most bizarre disclosure I’ve ever been associated with, and I’ve seen many off the wall things in my years in the market.

Per CBSMarketwatch

Shares of beleaguered biotech Sequenom Inc. got a much-needed boost last week in the form of a somewhat favorable report issued by Lazard Capital Markets, but is the stock really that seaworthy?
Sequenom jumped nearly 15% on May 27, after Lazard analyst Sean Lavin upgraded the stock, now trading in the $3 range, to hold from sell, saying he believes it had more potential upside than downside.
While cautioning that the …

With Sequenom [SQNM: 3.95, 0.00 (0.00%)] losing about three-quarters of its market value in pre-market trading to around 3 bucks per share; EXACT Sciences [EXAS: 1.7287, 0.00 (0.00%)] is poised to continue its comeback from penny stock levels late last year and has a chance to close the year at a higher market value than its molecular diagnostics rival.

SQNM launched a hostile, all-stock tender offer for EXAS earlier this year for $1.50 per share (which would now be valued at less than 40 cents), but EXACT rejected the deal in favor of a strategic pact with Genzyme [GENZ: 54.20, 0.00 (0.00%)] which involved a $24.5M cash infusion. Click here for a link to my comment (pasted below) on a Forbes article that was bullish on SQNM while trading around 25 bucks in late January:

SQNM is a heavily hyped (e.g. CNBC) and

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div style="text-align: justify;"Several firms commenting on span style="font-weight: bold;"Sequenom (NASDAQ:SQNM)/span after the co announced it has delayed the launch of its Down syndrome (T21) test due to “employee mishandling” of Ramp;D study data in both the RNA amp; DNA arms. As such, the company is no longer relying on previously reported results as “the clinical performance appears questionable”. SQNM is also reviewing data from its other Dx tests, and a special independent committee is investigating.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"- Stephens/span is downgrading SQNM to Equal Weight from Overweight while lowering their tgt to $6 from $30. Clearly SQNM has taken a substantial credibility hit here and will likely lose a significant portion of its market capitalization today. Furthermore, they believe a delay in the launch of the prenatal diagnostics franchise exacerbates potential liquidity risk. Firm believes the best way to currently value the business is to look at a sum ...

I am saying “wow” a lot of late – Sequenom (SQNM) is out with something after hours I’ve never seen in all the years I’ve been doing stocks; a delay in their Down Syndrome test due to employee mishandling of data. The stock is down 50% after hours. Worse – this was our only long position I actually have a hedge against, but I covered it into the weakness early this week (and patted myself on the back after it bounced from below $14). Basically we have 50 shares short as a holding position. On the long side we only have a 1.4% stake since the stock chart has been awful but looks like that will be 0.7% by tomorrow. Not good – it’s one thing to be hit by an earnings situation but this …

Trading on the OTCBB, and headquartered in Anaheim, California, Location Based Technologies Inc. designs and develops personal locator devices and services. They are the developer and manufacturer of the PocketFinder™ Personal Locator and the Pocketfinder ™ Network.

The company’s products are both switch and network-based and use wireless data services. They also use voice recognition, and location-based tracking capabilities. A user can monitor the location of their PocketFinder™ and other PocketFinder Personal Locator devices.

The company’s People-PocketFinder is a small location device that allows a user to locate a family member’s device location at anytime from almost anywhere via the internet, cellular phone, or a fixed-wire telephone. It is suitable for outdoor enthusiasts, extreme sports participants, scouting organizations. It is also valuable for caretakers of persons with Autism, Down Syndrome, or Alzheimer’s.

The company’s PetFinder® product receives radio signals from Global Positioning Satellites. The PetFinder® service network begins receiving a

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Business Week’s Inside Wall Street columnist Gene Marcial recommended Sequenom:

a. shares of Sequenom, maker of genetic testing and molecular diagnostic products, have jumped off the charts recently—with the stock price zooming from 5 in April to 21 by Aug. 15.

b. Sequenom is developing a noninvasive prenatal test to detect Down Syndrome in pregnant women; the “revolutionary” technology that’s involved is part of Sequenom’s MassARRAY system that seeks to establish its test as “the next-generation standard for prenatal and oncology molecular diagnostics.”

c. There are tests for Down Syndrome already on the market, but,  Sequenom’s product removes prevailing concern about their accuracy; to validate its technology, Sequenom has announced results from 200 clinical studies that showed its test identified all Down Syndrome samples with “no false positives.”

d. The potential market for Sequenom’s test runs to about $1.5 billion to $3 billion. Worldwide, the potential could be up to $6 billion

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Sequenom Rodman & Renshaw reiterates Market Outperform. Target $7.5 to $8.5. Rodman & Renshaw raises their target on SQNM to $8.50 from $7.50, saying last night the co reported its best-ever quarterly results.