Thursday's Small-Cap Winners & Losers

The small-cap sector mimicked the choppy broad indices and traded little changed Thursday, despite some big moves among individual names.

General Steel (GSI) was one of the biggest winners, surging some 50% to $14.25 after getting listed on the American Stock Exchange. The China-based steel concern previously traded on the OTC bulletin board.

Another China-based company, Orsus Xelent Technologies (ORS), shot up 52% to $4.93 after projecting a year-over-year sales increase of more than 20% in the third quarter. That would mean a top line in excess of $24.6 million for the cell-phone designer.

California's Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals (HEPH) surged 24% after saying its HE3235 cancer treatment "significantly inhibited tumor growth" in preclinical testing on hormone-independent tumors, which are associated with late-stage prostate cancer. Hollis shares were trading at $2.53.

But fellow health-care stock Bioject Medical Technologies (BJCT) plunged 23.4% on word Roche and Trimeris (TRMS) will no longer pursue regulatory approval to use the company's Biojector 2000 with their anti-HIV drug Fuzeon.

Shares of Bioject, Portland, Ore., fell 33 cents to $1.08. Trimeris was recently off 4.8%.

Charlotte Russe (CHIC), a San Diego-based women's apparel retailer, sank 10.5% after JPMorgan downgraded the stock in light of Wet Seal's (WTSLA) third-quarter profit warning Wednesday night. The analyst said that Wet Seal, a teen-girls' apparel chain, was probably hurt by broad factors such as "tough mall traffic and warmer weather."