Biofuels Stock and Financial Outlook for October 5: Stocks expected to open up, as decent September jobs data is released and ethanol stocks bounce back

Stocks were expected to open higher this morning as investors received solid if unspectacular news from September jobs data. Major indices were up 0.1-0.3 percent in futures trading. September jobs were up 110,000 in figures released by the Department of Labor this morning.
Yesterday, the Biofuels Digest Indexâ„¢, a basket of publicly traded biofuels stocks, gained 0.69% to close at 97.34 as ethanol pure-plays such as Pacific Ethanol (PEIX), VeraSun (VSR) and Aventine Renewables (AVR) made a concerted recovery, although diversified companies such as Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) and The Andersons (ANDE) had more mixed results from the day’s trading.

Leading the pure plays was Aventine, up 8.00% to $9.85 despite a downgrade by Morgan Stanley analyst David Silver, who said that distribution problems had caused a supply imbalance earlier than previously anticipated. Aventine received a favorable nod in The Motley Fool article earlier in the day. VeraSun was up 6.59% to $10.67 and Pacific Ethanol was up 6.16% to $9.30, possibly as a bounce-back effect from last week’s plunge.

Losers and winners were evenly spilt for the day, with microcaps such as Texcom (TEXC.PK) and Green Energy Resources (GRGR.PK) taking more than 10 percent hits as investors looked for stocks that could ride out the expected ethanol price weakness for the remainder of 2007.

In the broader markets, the Dow was up 6.26 points to close at 13974.31, the S&P 500 rose 3.25 to 1542.84, and the Nasdaq was up 4.14 points to 2733.57.

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