Ten Clean Energy Stocks For 2017: Finessing Trump
Tom Konrad Ph.D., CFA The History of the "10 Clean Energy Stocks" Model Portfolios 2017 will be the ninth year I publish a list of ten clean energy stocks I expect to do well in the coming year. This series has evolved from a simple, off-the-cuff list in 2008, to a full blown model portfolio, with predetermined benchmarks and (mostly) monthly updates on performance and significant news for the 10 stocks. While there is much overlap between the model portfolio and my own holdings (both personal and in the Green Global Equity Income Portfolio (GGEIP),...
Ten Clean Energy Stocks For 2016: Just The Numbers (9-1 to 10-11-16)
Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA I missed my regular monthly update of my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2016 model portfolio at the start of October due to vacation. This mini-update will just give the numbers through October 11th, without the regular discussion of company events. I'll follow up in early November covering highlights for the full two months. As you can see from the chart below, the portfolio and all sub-portfolios did very well by outperforming their benchmarks by 3% to 12% for the six week period. See the May...
Is XsunX (XSNX) Being Manipulated?
Hans Deuel at Clearfish Research presents some very good concerns about the possible manipulation of the shares of XSUNX Inc. (XSNX). I've received a number of comments about XsunX, all from the same person. I decided to look into them. They are working on transparent solar cells, have a weird history, and a weird structure. The only technological information I can find on them is all paid advertising (from IPODesktop and others) masquerading as research. Each of their press releases are misleading. They offer one key statement, and then go on about intentions. For example, the latest one...
Shares of Hydrogenics Purchased
Hydrogenics Corp (HYGS) is a developer of fuel cell technology and hydrogen generation. They are also working with wind farm technology in the generation of hydrogen. Back in January of this year they successfully completed the purchase of Stuart Energy which compliments their product portfolio. Shares of the stock have been under pressure for the last couple of months due to missed expectations on Q1 revenue results. There is also some major concern about an increase in product backlog. In August, HYGS issued their most recent quarterly earnings and are attempting to reassure the...
Trade Like It’s 2008
Tom Konrad CFA Three stocks I sold recently, and why. Three years later, I'm still kicking myself that the severity of the 2008 financial crisis and stock market collapse took me by surprise. Not that I wasn't in good company. If a majority of investors had been prepared for the crisis, it would never have happened in the first place: The overpriced CDOs and other securities which were a large part of the cause would never have become overpriced. But making excuses for past mistakes is not useful. Learning from them...
Restarting 10 Clean Energy Stocks Series
By Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
With the launch of my (green dividend income focused) hedge fund early this year, I had to take a hiatus from publishing my annual list of 10 Clean Energy Stocks that I feel will do well in the coming year. Â Since my duty to clients takes precedence over readers, I could not tell people about stocks I liked before buying them for the fund.
As we complete the first half of the year, the fund is now largely invested, although I am still keeping some buying power back in anticipation that the overall market could easily...
Alternative Energy Stocks Portfolio Update
It's been six weeks since I last provided readers with an update on the Paper Portfolio. According to the guidelines I laid out there, stocks are added to the portfolio when Chares or I mention them positively for the first time (leaving out ones for which Yahoo! finance does not have historical data, which are mostly pink sheet stocks.) Here are the ones we've added since then. Stock Article Date Added Price Price 9/5/07 DOW Investing in energy Efficient Homes 7/24/07 $47.20 $42.20 OC Investing in energy Efficient Homes 7/24/07 $33.00 $24.26 ...
Earnings Roundup: Metals Prices Boost Covanta and Umicore
By Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA
You don’t have to own mining companies to benefit from rising metals prices.
This is a roundup of first quarter earnings notes shared with my Patreon supporters over the last week. Waste to energy operator Covanta and specialty metals recycler Umicore are both benefiting from skyrocketing metals prices.
Just as renewable energy and energy efficiency stocks have long shown that investors don’t have to own fossil fuel companies to benefit from rising prices of fossil fuels, recyclers like Covanta and Umicore are showing that you don’t have to own environmentally damaging mining companies to benefit from rising...
Four American Stocks for the Next Economy
Garvin Jabusch The Green Alpha Advisors' approach to portfolio management utilizes a top-down macroeconomic model reflecting how global economies will evolve to meet demands presented by modern challenges such as resource scarcity, growing populations, land and food management, atmospheric carbon and extreme weather, to name a few. These emerging challenges are daunting, but fortunately, society is answering and acting to preserve our economies and way of life with a new wave of innovation, the like of which has not been seen since the information technology revolution of the 1990s and the industrial revolution before that. The...
Performance Update: Ten Speculations for 2008
This is the first of a short series of articles I plan, reviewing how my stock recommendations have been doing this year. I started the year bringing you 10 Alternative Energy Stocks I thought were worth speculating on for 2008, and I'll start this review with those articles, and also give you updates on what's been happening (or not) with the stocks. Click on the company name a link to the original article where I wrote about the stock. Overall, a portfolio with equal dollar positions in these ten stocks is up 11.4% for the year, compared to the...
Optionetics Story on Alt E Stocks
Fredric Ruffy from Optionetics.com has written a cautionary article about investing in Alternative Energy stocks. If alternative fuel companies made lots of money, there would be no energy crisis today. Unfortunately, most of these companies don't. You will start to see more and more stories about this sector now that gas prices are starting to cross the $3 per gallon mark and head even higher. As I said in a previous article, this sector is currently in a trading market. While he cautions investors that are looking for the long term viability of this investment, he...
Give the Gift of a Future This Christmas: Five Sustainable Companies For Your Kids...
A Carbon Conundrum for Christmas Do we have to choose between happy kids this Christmas, and a happy future for those kids? Practically everything we buy has a negative environmental impact. If green consumption is an oxymoron, so is green giving. Are we left with only greener giving? It often seems that the only way to be truly green is to be like the Grinch (before his heart-enlargement) and not give anyone anything. And skip the tree while you're at it. It's a hard decision, and while there are many Green Shopping Advisories telling us that we can buy...
Calpine Delisted from NYSE
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.
Three Green Money Managers; Six Green Stocks for 2013
Tom Konrad When I asked my panel of green money managers their predictions for trends 2013, I got enough material for four articles: On where the cleantech sector is heading in 2013, as well as on Solar, Smart Grid, and LED technology. I also asked them for stock picks, some of which I included in the previous articles. Several had opinions about EnerNOC (NASD:ENOC), which I wrote about here, and two picked LED stocks Veeco Instruments (NASD:VECO) and Universal Display Corp. (NASD:PANL), which I discussed here. Since I just published my annual model portfolio of...
Update: Ten Speculations for 2008
A year ago, I brought you 10 Alternative Energy Stocks I thought were worth speculating on for 2008. I revisited these in June, when a balanced portfolio of the 10 was "up 11.4% for the year, compared to the S&P 500 which is down 4.2% and the NASDAQ Clean Edge US Index, which is down approximately 14.3%." Speculative picks tend to do better than the market as a whole in bull markets, and worse in bear markets, so given the steep drop in markets since then, I would normally expect these more speculative picks to fare worse. This is...
Performance Update: Sell and Short Recommendations
Investors are getting bearish these days, which comes as a surprise to me, since I'm used to being in the minority. I was a bear when I first took the leap from mutual funds and started trading stocks in 1999, and am a bear still. I wish I'd turned bullish for a couple of years at what I consider to be the large bear market recovery of 2003-2006, but I didn't. However, since I was (and still am) bullish on commodities since around the same time frame, I can't complain about my returns over the period. This spring, I...
