STOCK PICKS: Top Five Small-Cap Stocks for Oct. 10

Management reported that all of the company's businesses performed well during the quarter, especially health sciences and crop protection. Aceto is looking to expand its global markets and grow its core businesses, and management cited Vietnam as one place where growth opportunities exist for the company, as it has been granted a license to sell medicines, medical devices and active pharmaceutical ingredients to the pharmaceutical industry there. Aceto's stock has shown lackluster performance recently, but we feel that the company's strengths outweigh any weakness at this time.

SY Bancorp(SYBT Quote) is the holding company for Stock Yards Bank & Trust, which offers a variety of financial services, including banking, investment management, trust services, brokerage services and an array of mortgage services. Our buy rating for SY Bancorp has not changed since November 2002. This rating is supported by the company's notable return on equity, expanding profit margins, good cash flow from operations, growth in EPS and solid stock price performance.

While the company's net income dropped slightly in the second quarter of fiscal 2008, EPS improved slightly to 45 cents, from 43 cents in the year-ago quarter, representing record EPS for the quarter. Return on equity also improved slightly, rising from 16.71% in the second quarter of fiscal 2007 to 17.22% in the most recent quarter. Gross profit margin is currently very high at 72.4%, and the company's net profit margin of 21.1% significantly outperformed the industry average. Net operating cash increased dramatically in the second quarter, rising 2,607.28% year over year to $12.74 million. In addition, the company's loan portfolio increased 14.0% when compared with the same quarter last year.