Portfolio

Wouldn't you know it, right after I posted about this company and complained that I couldn't buy it, I checked my brokerage account to see if there was any movement to my open market order. Well the IntraWeb gods must have been smiling on me, I got a partial fill in my personal account. So I now have a small stake in Carmanah Tech Corp (CMH.V) at a price of $3.0525. Maybe I should post my complaints more often :-) DISCLAIMER: I am not a registered investment advisor. The information and trades that I provide here...

Tom Konrad CFA The third quarter earnings season has been quite eventful for my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2013 and six alternative picks model portfolios, so much so that writing about them has taken a back seat to keeping up with the announcements.  There were a number of earnings disappointments and earnings announcements which were in line with my expectations but the market treated like disappointments. These resulted in an overall decline of 2.5% for the portfolio since the last update, even as my industry benchmarks, the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy (PBW) and my...

Lighting Science Group Corp. (LSGP.OB) has been on my watchlist for several months. They design and market energy efficient lighting solutions with long lasting LED bulbs that can be quickly deployed in existing lighting applications and produce immediate cost savings and environmental benefits. Some key events that have attracted me to this company: They recently moved to the OTC BB off the pink sheets.They recently received a private placement of almost $7 millionAfter a several year absence they are finally a fully reporting companyThey are currently far from being profitable, but the trend on the balance sheet is...

Tom Konrad CFA Although green stocks did better than un-green (or brown) stocks since Newsweek's 2009 Green Rankings were published, the big winners were the greenest stocks in the brownest sectors. Newsweek has released its 2010 Green Rankings for America's 500 largest corporations, and the companies at the top of the list are happily gloating about being greener than their rivals.  More important to investors is the question: Do the greenest companies beat the market? Marc Gunther notes that the top 100 companies in the 2009 Green Rankings outperformed the S&P 500 by 6.8%.  ...

I currently don't have time to do a complete writeup on this stock, but wanted to let everyone know that I purchased shares in Active Power Inc (ACPW) this afternoon for both my personal portfolio and the mutual fund. The average price was at $3.77. I will updated this post later this afternoon with more details. Updated at 10:00 PM As I mentioned above I purchased shares in Active Power Inc (ACPW) this afternoon for both the mutual fund and my personal portfolio. Active Power designs and sells battery-free uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems....

Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA I never thought 2009 would be a good year for risky stocks, but my readers asked for them anyway.  So far, my risk taking readers have not been burnt too badly, and the portfolio as a whole continues to track its benchmarks. In my first quarter update for my green energy gambles for 2009, I noted that the portfolio had lost about 10%, between the benchmark returns (-12% and -5%), but not very impressive.  Since then, the portfolio as a whole has gained a little ground, and is almost exactly midway between the benchmarks. The...

John Petersen Short sellers are the bane of every securities lawyer who represents small public companies. In over thirty years of practice I've never advocated a short sale because I hate the idea of profiting from someone else's misery. Based on recent quarterly reports filed by my short-list of pure play energy storage companies, which includes Tesla Motors (TSLA) as an honorary member, I'm compelled to break with tradition and suggest a paired trade that involves a short sale of Tesla coupled with a long purchase of Exide Technologies (XIDE). The following table summarizes the year-to-date and...

Tom Konrad CFA Few investors have good memories of 2008, but when it comes to the performance of my annual model portfolio of ten clean energy stocks, I'm finding the resemblance to 2008 remarkably striking.  The good part of that memory is that my picks are once again out-performing my clean energy benchmark, the PowerShares Clean Energy ETF (PBW).  The bad news is that "out-performance" means down 44% for the portfolio, compared to down 48% for PBW: a Pyrrhic victory.  Over the same period, the broad market Russell 2000 index was down 22%.  For 2008,...

Charles MorandLast week, I added a little to my position in AAER (AAERF.PK). I first took a long position in AAER, the Canadian-based MW-size wind turbine maker, over two years ago. I've since pared down it significantly, both because I wanted to take some profit after a meteoric rise in share price in Q4 2007 and later because of the company's seeming inability to get orders for more than a couple of turbines at a time. Although there was, before the credit crisis hit, a severe shortage of wind turbines and wind turbine components, barriers to...

by Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA Since I have not had much time to write for AltEnegyStocks, I thought I'd share with readers some notes I wrote for investors in the JPS Green Economy Fund, a hedge fund for which I'm director of Research, regarding our holdings in the third quarter: In the third quarter, we took advantage of the general decline of clean energy "YieldCos" to add two of these owners of wind and solar farms to our portfolio at attractive yields.  Pattern Energy Group (PEGI) is an owner of wind farms having long term power purchase agreements...

Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA In the two months since my last "monthly" update, clean energy stocks fell precipitously in September and then recovered most of those losses in October, although not for the year.  Income focused Yieldcos have been particularly badly hit, but my income heavy  Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2015 model portfolio has done quite well in spite of this.  I attribute this resilience to my emphasis on current dividend income, rather than the dividend plus double-digit growth that many Yieldcos were promising before the collapse in their stock prices rendered...

The New York Stock Exchange has officially delisted Calpine Corp. and the stock is now currently trading over-the-counter as a pink sheet with the following ticker: CPNL.PK.

Tom Konrad CFA In the six months since I published my annual clean energy mini-portfolio, it has far outperformed my industry benchmark, the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy Index (PBW).  The dismal performance of renewable energy stocks so far this year is likely to lead to great buying opportunities in the rest of the year. 2010 is the third year in a row that I've published a list of ten renewable and energy efficiency stocks that I expect to perform well over the coming year. The details on the list for 2010 are here; this article is...

Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA 2015 was a very tough year for energy stocks, especially income oriented energy stocks such as (mostly fossil fuel) MLPs and (mostly clean energy) Yieldcos.  Not only did oil and gas prices drop dramatically, but most other commodities did as well.  Low commodity prices hurt commodity producers, but also commodity recyclers and efficiency companies that help reduce the consumption. Against this backdrop, I'm happy that my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2015 model portfolio ended the year in the black, with a 5.8%...

Shares of Calpine Corp. (CPN) suffered a greater than 20% loss yesterday and is now down almost another 13% today. All of this was caused by a court ruling stating that they will be unable to use the $395 million in cash they received from the sale of oil and gas fields earlier this year for the purpose of buying natural gas to run its power plants. The dispute stems from the Bank of New York's decision in September when, acting as trustee for Calpine bondholders, it withheld proceeds from Calpine's sale in July of North...