Misc

A reader recently submitted the following comment that I felt would be ideal to talk about here. I am wondering if you have any opinions (hopefully informed ones) about how Katrina, and now Rita, have/will affect PBW's profitability in the near and/or long term? I'm thinking of moving a few thousand I currently have in US savings bonds into a green energy fund. I can't address whether you should or shouldn't invest your money into PBW since every person has a specific tolerance to risk and I'm not a registered investment advisor. What I...

Another excellent resource for investment information for Alternative/Clean/Green investing is Clean Break. If you haven't added Tyler's blog to your RSS aggregator, then you should. I point this out since there is a very interesting snippet in one of his recent posts about future projections for investment by the VC community. Cleantech Venture Network released its latest data on cleantech investing. In the second quarter of 2005 investments in cleantech grew to $369 million (U.S.), up 9 per cent from the first quarter. In the first half of 2005, investments have jumped 21 per...

I read several financial sites and feeds throughout the day and I have an entire section devoted to various stock blogs in my Bloglines feed reader account. A post on Andrew Tobias's website today really caught my attention where he was talking about his $100,000 “idea� contest. In response to the $100,000 “idea� contest, Alan Q writes: “Here’s mine and it’s a damn fine idea. Building on the success of the X Prize in reusable spacecraft: Expand government funded X Prizes in areas where innovation is vital to the nation's economic future and national security. For...

AltEnergyStocks.com is taking a holiday vacation and will resume posting the first week of January. I wish you a safe and happy holiday.

The new Alternative Energy ETF, which will be managed by PowerShares Capital Management, will track the WilderHill Clean Energy Index, a benchmark calculated by the Amex that was launched in August. The Amex collaborated with index provider WilderShares, LLC in developing the index. It will start trading on the AMEX on February 4th. The index contains 37 companies that use greener and renewable energy alternatives such as wind, solar, and hydrogen fuel cells. I'm searching for a ticker and will post it once I can find it. Post a comment if you find it before I do.

If you are seeing this post, that means this website has been successfully moved over to the new server. As you may (or may not know) I run a hosting business on the side. This website is more of a hobby for me. This is in addition to my REAL fulltime job. One positive about maintaining this website is it has brought me more clients for my hosting business. I recently added a new client that is now getting some decent traffic. So I purchased some servers and I'm in the process of relocating all my...

I recently received an e-mail question from Don that asked, Have you come across any mutual funds that invest in alt. energy stocks? Here was my response, Don, I haven't found any specific mutual funds that are entirely in this sector. I know that the Pax funds have a few holdings of Alt E stocks. This sector has been hot recently, so I know many of the stocks that I follow are in many mutual fund portfolios. Most mutual fund managers are momentum players and when they see stocks moving quickly in any specific quarter,...

At my real job, a group of us have a yearly stock picking contest. Some years I have performed well, others have been terrible (last year my total performance for my picks was a miserable -13%.) The winner of 2004 was up over 50%. Her method, spread out the newspaper, take 3 M&M candies and throw them up in the air. She picked the 3 stocks the candies landed on. The rules of our little contest are simple. Pick three stocks that trade for over $5. We buy at the close on the first trading day of the...

The American Stock Exchange® (Amex®) will launch trading in options on Thursday, March 3, 2005 on the underlying shares of The PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio (PBW) will open with strike prices of 10-20 with one-point increments and position limits of 1,350,000 shares. The options will trade on the March expiration cycle with initial expirations in March, April, June and September. The specialist will be LaBranche Structured Products, LLC. PowerShares Wilderhill Clean Energy Portfolio is a closed-end fund incorporated in the USA. The Fund's investment objective seeks to correspond to the price and yield of the Wilderhill Clean...

There are several newsletter editors that are floating the idea that the next G7 conference will have some significant announcements concern the requirement for its members to use alternative energy. The next scheduled meeting is on Friday with a meeting of the G7 finance ministers and central bankers. I doubt anything will be announced at this time. But any announcement by the G7 concerning alternative energy will help to propel the AltE stocks.

I wanted to extend my thanks to all of the people that want me to keep this website alive. I have been reviewing many of the comments and plan to incorporate many of these changes very soon. My plan is to have a re-launch of the website with all of the changes by September 1st. My goal is to become more focused on investment ideas, rather than just a press release news source. I think many of you will be very happy with the final results. Thanks for your patience. Mark p.s. The call...

This Thursday, PowerShares Capital Management LLC, will introduce a new exchange traded fund (ETF) based on the WilderHill Clean Energy Index, the first index comprised of companies focused on developing renewable sources of energy, clean energy technologies and environmentally-friendly technologies within the energy sector. The "PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio" (PBW) will begin trading on the American Stock Exchange March 3, 2005 and will replicate the WilderHill Clean Energy Index.

I have been on a brief hiatus from posting to the website. My other projects and real job have been taking a large portion of my time. I was also recently down two employees at my company, so I was doing triple the amount of my normal work. I’m making an offer to one person today so I'm able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will be trying to catch up on many of the missed press releases today. I will also be switching the intra day graphic to the new Alternative Energy ETF...