Biofuels Stock and Financial Outlook for September 25: Stocks expected to open lower as housing profit warnings felt; report attributed to OECD hurts biofuels

Profit warnings in the housing sector and the General Motors auto strike took down stock futures in overnight trading. The major indices were all down in futures trading between 0.1 and 0.3 percent.

In biofuels, new 52-week lows were recorded by major ethanol stocks as bad news continued to mount on margins and global policy. Yesterday, the Renewable Fuels Association called on the OECD to disavow a report attributed to the organization calling for an end to corn ethanol subsidies; the move implicitly acknowledged the impact of unfavorable publicity.

The Biofuels Digest Indexâ„¢ (BDI), a basket of 21 major public biofuel stocks, fell 1.55% to 98.23 as analyst downgrades finally caught up with the major ethanol stocks amidst a broad market sell-off prompted by the GM strike and bad earnings reported by Deutsche Bank.

Among biofuel stocks, losers led gainers by 11 to 7, but Aventine (AVR) and Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) both fell more than 5% following ethanol sector downgrades late Thursday that finally were felt in the market today. Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) and VeraSun (VSE) were both off more than 1.27% in brisk trading.

There was some good news on the microcaps, with Xethanol (XNL) strongly up 7.77% to $0.811 following a strong gain Friday, while Texcom (TEXC.PK) and New Gen Technologies (NWGN.OB) were both sharply up; Green Plains Renewable Energy led the losers among the small-caps, down more than 10% in trading.

In the broader markets, the Dow Jones industrials lost 61.13 points to close at 13,759.06, the S&P 500 fell 8.02 to 1517.73 and the Nasdaq fell 3.27 points to close at 2667.95.

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