Green Energy Investing For Beginners, Part III: Before You Invest

Tom Konrad, CFA Before you consider green stock market investments, invest in yourself. A reader of my article on asset allocation for green energy investors brought up an important point: we may have green opportunities in our own lives, such as improving the energy efficiency of our homes, which will return much safer and higher returns than green stocks, especially when the market as a whole is as overvalued as I currently believe it is. Homeowners typically have a large number of high-return energy efficiency investments they can make.  Since energy efficiency reduces energy use, it both produces returns...

The Difference between Reality and Pandering

Garvin Jabusch Innovation and increasing economic efficiency have always been the keys to profits and wealth. Getting more value out of systems without commensurate increases in inputs is the definition of growing efficiency, and it has been the engine of human economies since someone figured out how to use energy from a water wheel to grind grain instead of doing it by hand with a stone bowl and pestle. With that development (to simplify), a couple family members could run the wheel, freeing up everyone else for other pursuits. This kind of gain is the hallmark, to greater and...

Green Energy Investing For Beginners: How Many Stocks Should You Own?

Tom Konrad, CFA In stock portfolios, deciding how many stocks to own involves weighing a trade off.   A smaller portfolio can be built (and sold) with fewer commissions, and also requires less time to research.  On the other hand, a portfolio with fewer stocks will gain fewer benefits of diversification, and likely be both more volatile and harder to sell in a crisis.  These trade offs are also affected by the size of the portfolio, and the market capitalization and liquidity of the companies in the portfolio. Diversification is widely accepted as a nearly costless way to reduce...

Short Demand for Cree High and Rising

I got a call from my broker this morning asking me if I'd be willing to loan out my shares of Cree, Inc. (NASD:CREE) to a short seller.  Since the only cost to me is that I will not be able to vote my shares, and I will earn 2.5% per annum on the value, I said "yes."  Normally, brokerages get the shares they lend out to shorts from margin accounts with a margin balance.  Since I never carry a balance (although I do have a margin account in order to trade options) they must ask my permission...

An Elephant Hunter Explains Market Dynamics

John Petersen Friday afternoon was a strange time for Axion Power International (AXPW.OB). After trading 200,000 shares early in the day, Axion filed $28 million mixed shelf registration with the SEC at about one o'clock and the fly on the wall reported the filing within minutes. It seems that some stockholders were spooked by the news and assumed that Axion would sell stock right away instead of waiting for the fall deal season. Their knee-jerk selling shoved another 1.1 million shares into the market in three hours and made Friday the second heaviest trading day in Axion's history....

Neutralizing Your Peak Oil Risk

by Tom Konrad Lifestyle Risks from Peak Oil In the US, we all have a large exposure to the risk of rising energy prices.  In addition to the cost of gasoline, the whole US economy runs on oil, so a rise in the oil price is likely to affect our jobs, and the prices of all our assets, including our homes.  If other people have less money to spend and invest because of high oil prices, there will be a fall in demand for anything they were buying or investing in. House prices in exurbs and suburbs where the...

Asking the Right Questions: Why Invest in Clean Energy?

Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Often, knowing more about a company is less useful than knowing just a few of the right things.  Knowing the right questions to ask can help investors wade through a sea of mostly irrelevant information. Take a moment to answer the following poll: Suppose you want to know if fictional solar Company MySolar will outperform other solar stocks. Which fact would be most useful in your decision?(poll) The key to this question was the stated goal of "outperforming other solar stocks."  An investor who is only hoping to achieve returns equal...

Green Energy Investing for Experts, Index and Wrap-Up

Tom Konrad, CFA My Green Energy Investing for Experts series looked at ways shorting could both protect your portfolio against market decline, and make it greener by shorting decidedly non-green companies.  This is an index of the entries, plus one more industry for you to consider. Green Energy Investing for Experts, Part I made the case that shorting stocks that are particularly vulnerable to peak oil or climate change is a good way to hedge a portfolio of green stocks against a market decline while making the whole portfolio greener. Green Energy Investing for Experts, Part II looked at...
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