OBJECTIVES: While many small biotechs are acquired by larger pharmaceuticals, few attempt a full scale commercialization of their product. We analyzed the stock market returns of three small, single drug bio-technology firms which had drugs approved by the FDA in 2010. METHODS: The historical prices adjusted for corporate action were used for all three firms from Q4 2007 through Q3 2012 which accounted for 1,261 trading days per company. All products have been approved by the FDA for at least 8 quarters. Each company’s prices were broken up into daily and quarterly intervals as well as pre-launch and post-launch. Simple statistics and t-tests were run on the stock returns for all intervals. RESULTS: On average, the pooled total return associated with the pre-launch phase was 212.6% higher than post-launch. The average pooled quarterly and daily returns during the pre-launch period were 19.1% and .37% higher than the post-launch period, respectively. The standard deviation of the daily returns during the pre-launch period was on average 24% higher than during the post-launch period. A two-tail t-test assuming unequal variances was run on each of the daily stock prices with a hypothesized mean difference of 0 between pre-launch and post-launch, for all three of the companies the p-value was <0.05.   CONCLUSIONS: Investors seemed to prefer the pre-launch period which received a greater return on investment. The difference in the mean prices for each company in the different phases was statistically significant. However this analysis is relatively early in the post-launch term for each drug as smaller companies tend to gain market share more slowly than larger pharmaceuticals. The stock returns of these companies seem to be highest in the pre-launch phase as opposed to post-launch.