Here at AltEnergyStocks we try to give the best advice to help our readers sort quality alternative energy investments from the simply overvalued and the dangerous poseurs. How well are we doing?
Putting Play Money Where our Mouth Is.
As regular readers know, both Charles and I invest in many of the same stocks we recommend. I take a broad portfolio approach, with small stakes in almost everything I think is interesting, and larger stakes in companies I’m more bullish about, while Charles has a highly focused portfolio consisting of a small number of companies he expects to perform well. But our own returns will not be the same as our readers’ returns, since we both typically own the stocks before we write about them.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but few people want to follow a strategy without some idea of its track record. Our newly revised Portfolio page is designed to give our readers’ some idea of our track record… as well as a one-stop shop for a list of companies that we’re interested in for one reason or another.
We seldom give unequivocal "Buy" or "Sell" ratings, so a considerable amount of judgment is needed in deciding exactly what "following our advice" really means. Returns will undoubtedly vary widely depending on the investor, so we wanted to come up with an objective criterion for deciding what constitutes a "recommendation" and what does not. Here are the rules we’re using.
- The stock is mentioned in an article written by Charles or myself.
- We said something positive about it (this could be as little as "here’s a stock in an interesting sector"), and didn’t say to avoid it.
- Mutual funds and ETFs are excluded.
- Stocks are removed from the portfolio if we said to avoid/sell them at a later date. (So far, this has only happened with coal to liquids stocks, which Charles profiled in December, but I said to sell if you’re worried about Peak Coal.)
- We omitted stocks for which Yahoo! Finance does not have historical price data. This was primarily an issue for stocks which trade on London’s AIM, and a few pink-sheet stocks.
No intelligent investor would follow these rules (we hope you have done better by exercising more judgment), but in order to avoid hindsight bias, we designed rules which we hope will take the guesswork out of which stocks belong in the portfolio, and which do not.
We hope you will find our Portfolio Page educational, and we plan to keep it updated as we add new picks. As always, we welcome discussion and feedback.
DISCLOSURE: Tom Konrad and/or his clients have positions in many of the companies mentioned on the Portfolio page.
DISCLAIMER: The information and trades provided here are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to buy or sell any of these securities. Investing involves substantial risk and you should evaluate your own risk levels before you make any investment. Past results are not an indication of future performance. Please take the time to read the full disclaimer here.
