On Wall Street, 1991 was neither the best of years nor the worst of years, but it was, perhaps, one of the weirdest of years.

It featured a stock market that was buoyed by the Persian Gulf War, battered by a sudden plunge, and then defied gravity at year's end to close at a record high of 3,168.83.

"It's levitating," said Garfield L. Logan of Optivest, a Newport Beach investment counselor, who sees the market heading into the high-risk zone in 1992.

Shares of Orange County-based companies gained an average of 32.5% in 1991, outperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which increased 20.3%. But most of the local stocks are traded on the NASDAQ system, and as a group they fared far worse than the NASDAQ composite, which gained 56.8%. Analysts blamed the recession and tough times for technology companies, which predominate in Orange County.

The county's biggest winner was ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Costa Mesa, which staged a stunning turnaround in 1991 with a stock rise of nearly 522%. In 1990, its stock dropped almost 44%.

ICN's two subsidiaries were also among the top 10 gainers of 1991. Shares of Viratek Inc., whose antiviral drug ribavirin has been approved in Ireland for experimental use against the HIV virus, rose 519%, and SPI Pharmaceuticals, which has begun a joint venture to sell drugs in Yugoslavia, rose 231%. ICN holds a majority interest in both companies.

ICN had been a target of Securities and Exchange Commission scrutiny because of allegations that it "hyped" Viratek stock and misled regulators and the public about ribavirin's effectiveness against AIDS. But in May, ICN paid a $600,000 fine to settle civil charges stemming from its promotion of Viratek as a possible anti-AIDS drug, and in October it settled a related suit by the SEC without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

"They had what the Street called the Milan Panic discount," said Steven C. DeLuca, an analyst with Cruttenden & Co. of Newport Beach, referring to ICN's controversial founder. "He's had a storied past."

But Panic succeeded in luring investors back, and ICN's stock rose from $2.875 a share at the end of 1990 to close at $17.875 a share Tuesday.

Another big winner in 1991 was Clothestime Inc. of Anaheim, whose strategy of deep discounting on name-brand women's clothing helped propel its share price up 361%. Last year, Clothestime was among the county's 10 biggest percentage losers after its shares lost 69% of their value. Clothestime finished the year at $8.50 a share, up from $1.69 on Dec. 31, 1990.