Portfolio

Tom Konrad CFA Plummeting oil prices, global economic weakness, and the Republicans' win in the US midterms have delivered a triple-whammy to clean energy stocks over the last few months.  Many of the stock declines are justified more by headlines than fundamentals.  My 10 Clean Energy Stocks for 2014 model portfolio has suffered, especially the riskier growth stocks.  The strong dollar has been a further drag on the six foreign stocks. Since the last update at the start of October, the model portfolio is down 4.6%, for a loss since its December 27th,...

Tom Konrad CFA The last two months have not been kind to clean energy stocks.  Most commentators attribute the weakness to declining oil prices and the Republicans' strong showing in the midterm elections.  Whatever the cause, my 10 Clean Energy Stocks for 2014 model portfolio was dragged into a loss for the year where it had previously looked to return a small gain.  A large part of the decline was in the dollar's strength.  Measured in local currency, the average stock was flat, but the 8% decline in...

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...

Tom Konrad, CFA I never thought 2009 would be a good year for risky stocks, but my readers asked for them anyway.  The market's strong third quarter have paid off for risk-takers who gambled on my 10 Green Energy Gambles for 2009. I started out the year by providing readers with a portfolio of ten relatively conservative plays on green energy.  That portfolio was representative of how I planned to approach the market this year, and has produced stronger returns and less volatility when compared to both green energy stocks and the market as a whole.  Many of my...

I promised I'd do a performance update on my 10 Clean Energy Stocks for 2009 each quarter.  Here is the first (although readers got a mini-update in mid February, because I decided I didn't want to use double-shorts.) Company  Ticker Change 12/27/08 to 3/27/09 Dividend & Interest The Algonquin Power Income Trust AGQNF.PK +7.14% 5.36% Cree, Inc. CREE +59.96%   First Trust Global Wind Energy ETF FAN -10.73%   General Electric GE -32.50% 1.94% Johnson Controls JCI -25.97% 0.77% New Flyer...

John Petersen The second quarter was brutal for publicly traded energy storage companies which saw their stock prices fall by an average of 24.1% after a first quarter drubbing of 16.2%. Frankly I'm astonished that investors are chasing a battery-powered IPO like Tesla Motors (TSLA) and ignoring the energy storage technologies that will make EVs possible, and perhaps cost-effective, while making wind, solar and other renewable energy sources stable. At times like these I need to remind myself that energy storage is the beating heart of cleantech and take comfort in the fact that while Goldman Sachs began...

Tom Konrad CFA My ten annual stock picks have outperformed their clean energy benchmark for the third year running. Each year, I publish a list of ten renewable energy, energy efficiency, and cleantech stocks that I feel will outperform their peers in the coming year.  In both 2008 and 2009, my picks have beaten their industry benchmark, the PowerShares Wilderhill Clean Energy ETF (PBW), the most widely held industry ETF and the one that I recommend for making short-term bets on the clean energy industry.  The 2010 list is here. This year has been an interesting...

I purchased some more Beacon Power Corp. (NASDAQ:BCON) on Friday after watching the stock slowly dwindle over the past 2 weeks back toward its 3-month low. I purchased it at $1.07 Beacon Power makes flywheel-based, environmentally-friendly energy storage devices that can help smooth out supply-demand swings in electricity grids, notably by storing base-load power and releasing it during peak-load periods. More on Beacon Power’s flywheel technology. Beacon is not a company that looks particularly attractive fundamentally at the moment. For Q3 2006, the company reported a net loss of $3,165,000, or -$0.06 per share, on...

Tom Konrad, CFA A quick update of last month's list of speculative puts, to reflect the new options symbols. In January, I put together a list of nine puts and one small energy efficiency stock I expect to do well this year.  I normally only do updates on these every quarter, but because of the recent change option symbols, I thought I'd revisit my 10 Green Energy Gambles.  The links in the original article have stopped working; this new table shows the current list. Here's the list: with updated option symbols. Security Portfolio...

Tom Konrad CFA  My Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2015 model portfolio held on to first quarter gains in April, despite a 29% fall for one of the stocks.  (For details on that decline, see the Power REIT (NYSE:PW) section below.)  The portfolio as a whole was rescued by the recovering Canadian Dollar and Euro, as well as mild advances for most of the other stocks across the board.  That includes a 4.9% gain for TransAlta Renewables (TSX:RNW, OTC:TRSWF), and a 5.8% gain for FutureFuel (NYSE:FF) which I singled out...

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%.  ...

Tom Konrad CFA Experimenting with more frequent updates In the past, I genrally only wrote about my annual list of ten clean energy stocks on a quarterly basis, but when I wrote last month to apolgize for inadvertently slipping in an extra stock, and in the process wrote a few notes on a couple of the stocks with news, a couple readers wrote to say they liked the more frequent updates.  So let it be written, so let it be done.  Leave a comment if you think it's something I should continue doing,...

Renewable energy is still very much in its infancy, which means that companies in the space are either profitless or high-multiple startups, or divisions of much larger companies (GE Wind (NYSE:GE), or utilities such as FPL Group (NYSE:FPL) and Xcel (NYSE:XEL) which get much of their power from conventional generation.) This presents a dilemma for investors who understand the compelling drivers for the sector, but whose risk tolerance or financial needs indicate an income-based investing strategy. Canadian Income Trusts in Renewable Energy A few Canadian Income Trusts have historically gone some way towards filling this niche....

I purchased shares in Altair Nanomaterials (ALTI) this morning for both my personal portfolio and also the mutual fund. ALTI is a holding company that specializes in nanomaterials and also contains a life sciences division. The materials company has research in high performance batteries, fuel cells, and photovoltaics. Altair announced earnings today and the stock is up on the morning trading. Revenue Increases 68 Percent for Third Quarter and 230 Percent for Nine-Month Period "An increase in revenue of 230 percent for the first three quarters of 2005 is representative of the significant progress Altair has...