New Energy Finance - NEX - Weekly Review

Posted by Tim

July 23, 2008

Time again to report on last week’s results for the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, the NEX. The NEX is the target index for the PowerShares Global Clean Energy Fund (PBD: 13.31 0.00 0.00%). I found some interesting reversals in last week’s top and bottom stocks in the biofuels area.

The NEX ended the week with a gain of 4.2%, nicely out gaining the NASDAQ and S&P500, up 3% and 2.6%. AMEX oil lost 3% on falling crude.

The top sector for the week was biofuels and biomass with a gain of 8%. Three American ethanol were the top gainers while there were a pair of Brazilian ethanol companies in the bottom 5. Regular readers here know I am a strong proponent of U.S. ethanol production so these are gratifying returns. The energy efficiency sector was close on the heels of biofuels with a 7.7% gain.

Only one of the 7 sectors finished in negative territory. “Other renewables” consist of small hydropower and geothermal power and the sector managed to fall 0.9% on the pullback of Canadian Hydro Developers.

Here are the top gainers and losers for the week from the NEX:

NEX top gainers since 15 Jul 2008
VeraSun Energy VSE + 57.5%
Verenium VRNM + 55.1%
Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings AVR + 38.9%
Kingspan Group KSP + 29.3%
Maxwell Technologies MXWL + 20.3%

NEX top losers since 15 Jul 2008
Canadian Hydro Developers KHD - 12.7%
Sao Martinho SMTO3 - 11.3%
Conergy CGY - 8.7%
Cosan S/A Industria e Comercio CSAN3 - 8.0%
Sharp 6753 - 7.0%