Monthly Archives: April 2014

Bridget Boulle It’s been another ground breaking quarter for green bonds – the biggest yet with just under USD9bn issued ($8.997bn). It seems our initial estimate of $20bn for the year will be met much sooner than we thought so we’ve revised it to $40bn (there are no rules). There have been new issuers, new currencies, new underwriters, new areas of issuance and, for the first time, a green bonds index. All good things, here is a summary… The development banks led the way for the quarter but not by too much: development banks = USD4.9bn while corporates =...

by Debra Fiakas CFA Shares of Ocean Power Technologies (OPTT:  Nasdaq) have traded off over the past two weeks, after setting a new 52-week high in early March 2013.  Investors had bid the stock up in the weeks before the fiscal third quarter earnings announcement, but those gains almost have been erased.  The new negative trend has put OPTT on our list of small-cap energy stocks sinking into oversold territory.  Is the sell-off a chance to pick up shares of this ocean power developer at a bargain?  A better question might be what was...

By Harris Roen Alternative Energy Mutual Fund Returns Alternative energy mutual funds have posted extremely strong returns across the board. Gains have shown a wide breadth, with all MFs up for the last 12-month and 3-month periods. In the past year, all funds are up double digits. A new fund has been added to our tracking system, Calvert Green Bond A (CGAFX). This fund started trading in November 2013, and is the first green open end bond fund designed for retail investors. CGAFX focuses at least 80% of its assets on “…opportunities related to climate change...

Doug Young  One of China’s 2 major meltdowns in the solar panel sector has taken a big step forward with word that trading in shares of LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) has been suspended and the de-listing process formally begun as the company liquidates. Meantime, word of a missed interest payment by a building materials maker is sending the latest signal that China will let more companies in ailing sectors default on their debt rather than pay off their creditors. That’s an important signal for the solar sector, which relies heavily on such debt to finance its operations and where...

Tom Konrad CFA For both the stock market and the weather, March was more lion than lamb.  My broad market benchmark fell 2.2% to end up 1.5% for the quarter.  Volatile clean energy stocks were down 4%, to end the quarter up 15.7%.  My annual Ten Clean Energy Stocks model portfolio is designed to avoid much of the sector's notorious volatility, and fell only 0.6%, ending the quarter with a 3.9% total return.  In dollar terms, the first six (income oriented) picks returned an average...