THE STOCK MARKET, ESPECIALLY for chemical companies, seems to just drag on, lagging behind major market indexes and other industry sectors. In the second quarter, while pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company stocks scored double-digit gains, stocks of chemical companies, on average, turned in a more modest improvement. And unlike pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical stocks, chemicals failed to make up ground lost in the first quarter. Chemical stocks, to an extent, overcame some of the usual Wall Street jitters concerning low capacity utilization rates, high raw material costs, the general economic outlook, and, ultimately the effect of these factors on earnings. These jitters were more convincingly overcome at some companies than at others. Of the 25 companies that C&EN tracks, 19 had higher stock prices at the end of the second quarter than they did on the final trading day in March. However, only 11 showed improvement from the end of 2002. C&EN's index of average aggregate prices ...