Portfolio

Tom Konrad, CFA The stock market is up, and my bets against it are down, except in energy.  It's time to double down. Earlier this week, a client asked me if I'd found any buying opportunities while doing research for my "Best Peak Oil Investments" series.  The answer is, "no," although I've found a few companies I'm hoping to buy at lower prices, later.  As regular readers know, I've been bearish since June 2009, after I cashed in on the quick rally in March, April, and May of that year.  My last ten months of...

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%.  ...

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...

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...

My Quick Clean Energy Tracking Portfolio has solidly outperformed its benchmark... was it bad design? Tom Konrad, Ph.D. On February 27, I used the top holdings of the (then six) clean energy mutual funds to design a tracking portfolio intended to replicate the performance of those funds at much lower cost.  If my methodology was sound, the tracking portfolio should produce returns within the range of returns of the mutual funds on which it was based. If all went well, the returns would be at the upper end of that range because of the way I chose to emphasize...

I check in with professional green money managers Shawn Kravetz, Garvin Jabush, Jan Schalkwijk, and Rafael Coven to see how their fourteen top picks for 2014 are doing.

Tom Konrad CFA It's been a busy six weeks since I last updated readers on the news events driving my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2013 and six alternative picks.  I looked into the performance of the portfolio as a whole at the start of the month, along with some comments about the four renewable energy developers.  I thought at the time we might be seeing a bottom for these beleaguered stocks, but if I was right, we have yet to see the upturn.  Nevertheless, the...

Is it the unprecedented amount of media attention climate change is currently getting? Is it the State of the Union Address? Is it the price of oil? Or is it a combination of factors? In the end, it doesn't really matter; it's this time of year again and the value of the solar sector is heading north. Today was a great day for solar stocks, while the market as a whole was mainly flat. I remember this period last year very well. I was long Suntech Power and Energy Conversion Devices , acquired...

Several key indicators I follow have put me back into a buying mood. But sadly I will be spending most of my day in meetings and will not have much time to follow through on any purchases. I wanted to post a quick update about the stocks I'm following. I will be averaging down on some of my current holdings this week and also looking to add some new stocks to the portfolio. Here is my short list of new stocks I'm taking a close look at to add to the portfolio: Capstone Turbine Corp (CPTC)...

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...

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 Clip art by Philip Martin January has been a great month for clean energy stocks, and the stock market as a whole.  My clean energy benchmark, the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy Index (PBW), returned 10.9%, while the broad universe of small cap stocks which I benchmark with the iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM) is up a lesser but still impressive 9.5%. My ten clean energy picks for 2013 (introduced here), are up a...

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...

As I mentioned yesterday I had a limit order to purchase SunPower Corporation (SPWR). The stock was scheduled to start the day at $18 and I expected that the stock would be up big in the morning, so I set a limit order at $20. Well when the stock started trading it opened up at over $27. Mid-day the stock seemed to rest around the $25 level and that is when I entered the stock with a 1/3 position in my personal portfolio at a price of $25.70. The stock is not available for purchase at Marketocracy, so it...

Tom Konrad, CFA Three months have passed since I published my annual clean energy mini-portfolio.  So far, these stocks have beaten the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy Index (PBW) handily, but they trail the broader market. This is the third year in a row I've published a list of ten stocks for the year ahead at the end of December.  In 2008 my list trailed the broader stock market but beat the clean energy index, and last year it outperformed both.  So far, this year looks more like 2008 than 2009.  In addition to the portfolio of ten...

Tom Konrad CFA To my surprise, the market came back in the 3rd Quarter, and my portfolio of put options designed to hedge a market decline is predictably down.  However, my benchmark (a put against the Dow Jones Industrials has performed even worse than my picks.) I don't have a lot to say about the performance of my Ten Green Gambles for 2010 so far this year.  These gambles were a bet on a market decline in 2010.  Since we're now into the 4th quarter and the market is still...