Andrew Ling

Safe Haven Investments Amid a Global Crisis

Exactly, Jake. He also posts on every major forum trying to attract a crowd like a street performer. Don't take your financial advice from street performers. He should have a disclaimer in bold at the start of each article stating how he began shorting FSLR at $140 since it would certainly go to 0. The higher it rises the more certain he becomes.

The State of the Thin-Film Photovoltaic Industry

Nothing much has changed regarding the tellurium prices, hence not much change in my opinion of vnp.to I own shares mainly to offset risk of higher tellurium prices to FSLR. Announcements of new plants would be the best possible news for both FSLR and VNP. It would lead to higher te prices in the short run while also putting to rest speculation that FSLR can't procure enough te in the long run.

The Oil Shortage, and Other Fairy Tales

The secret to my success has been to never follow the advice of analysts. I'm amazed the downgrade had such an effect on FSLR yesterday especially considering that while downgrading the stock they had the upgrade the price target from $150 to $200. Basically this shows the lack of credibility the company has. If they had kept their opinions up to date the stock would've had a higher price target to begin with which they could've later lowered. Personally I haven't changed my price target in 18 months. When it was $30 I put on a $400 price target based on earnings potential + inherent value. seekingalpha.com/autho...

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

Eck, I've been trying to find a way to ship my Elise to Europe for the 3 months I'll be spending there. When I was there last year I drove my 60 horsepower rental Nissan Micra on the Autobahn flooring it for hours at a time. Unfortunately few people know the details and I didn't want to spend my vacation dealing with foreign bureaucrats. They charge a 20% tax to import the car but I figured I could sell it there to recover it there due to the favorable exchange rate and buy a new one when I got back.

I also got in and out of SOLF for a small profit last year before it had a huge collapse. I decided only to trade stocks I don't mind holding for long periods of time from now on. I'm still practicing my trading as it only accounts for about 5% of my position even though I make about 20 trades a month. My main trading principle is the change in the change in stock price. In other words when a stock accelerates on the way up it's commonly referred to as a break out and a buy indicator. Similarly when a stock sells off but the pace of the selloff slows to a stop it's also a buy indicator. This has been a great day trade with FSLR whenever the stock opens down on low volume. It will usually decrease it's downwards slope and then reverse itself at midday rallying back close to the open price by close. This doesn't work on high volume trading days since any resistance and support levels can be easily broken on volume.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

Tommy C, carbon fiber is indeed light but the cheapest car made out of carbon fiber is actually the electric Tesla Roadster at $100K. It's a long way off from mass market appeal. Automakers will have to walk before they can run. They are still using mostly steel in their chassis which should be replaced with Aluminum. My Lotus Elise does 0-60 in 4.8 secs and gets 30 MPG thanks to it's 150 pound aluminum chassis and lightweight plastic body panels. I'm still amazed that Porche and other sports car makers still make their chassis out of steel.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

Slider the difference between the 70s and now was that the 70s was an artificial opec shortage and the peak was in US production. Current prices have nothing to do with opec. They are due to a peak in world production. Unless you plan on discovering life and hence oil on Mars peaking in world production is a problem several orders of magnitudes greater than peaking US production. There is no real solution within 20 years although anything that helps compensate for energy shortfalls will benefit.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

sirfisup, when I drive to the Akeena Solar I can see obvious differences between the modules offered by different manufacturers. When I was in Europe I saw no differences between the GE, Vestas, or any other wind turbine. The only way to cut costs in wind is to make them even bigger, and 1MW turbines are already huge. It's a similar story with solar thermal. Although wind and solar thermal are about half the price per kwh of PV currently, they are mechanically based technologies that have existed for centuries with very little innovation occuring. This is why 2030 forecasts have PV accounting for the lions share of new electricity generation as well as a large chunk of total capacity.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

I try to stay away from small caps under $500 mil or so. Over the years I've seen numerous promise the moon and fail to deliver. I'm beginning to suspect some of these managements may not even believe they can achieve the targets they set. Many are just pumping their stocks. A revolutionary technology needs to be combined with credible management. That's why Tesla Motors is my most anticipated IPO. Although they're also missing production goals, their CEO Elon Musk is proven as the billionaire founder of paypal.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

I've owned STP in the past as my "value" play simply because I've been uncomfortable at times having all my holdings in FSLR. However, AMAT is my new limited downside play and I see no reason to buy STP over AMAT. With 2 billion in annual income AMAT is the real potential economy of scale. The $1.9 Billion Best Solar order alone would leapfrog best solar over STP. The slew of low priced pv coming online is very bad news for any company still trying to expand economies of scale with a potentially inferior technology. STP realizes this and is also a customer of AMAT. When you think about AMAT's potential it's comparable to all the other solar stocks combined. Since they're turning over equipment quickly they don't have to raise as much money as STP or Best Solar.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

GE is currently lacking an LED presence. That's what led to rumors they may make an offer for Cree. I wouldn't worry about GE. The same thing could've been said about all these solar "startups" 10 years ago. But GE has been unbelievably slow to the solar game. Competition is always fierce in the early stages of hypergrowth but generally all the stocks involved appreciate for at least a few years until the market sorts out the winners from the losers.

My Top 5 Alternative Energy Stocks - and 10 Honorable Mentions

Wind farms are great but the problem with wind power stocks is that it's a commoditized business. I used to own Zoltek (ZOLT) as a wind power play since they have a large share of the carbon fiber market, but the company is obviously mismanaged. Notice how I left all the Chinese solar stocks off the list. All of the companies I focus on have disruptive technology.

First Solar: Large Intangible Assets and High PEs Go Together

parker and jack, I thought the article was quite clear. The intangible asset is the cdte manufacturing process. When customers of AMAT are willing to pay double the capex, totally almost $2 Billion for a higher cost/watt it indicates tremendous value in FSLR's process.

Since this is often close to 100% of the valuation of a company which does not yet have earnings, why would you focus entirely on earnings once the company is profitable? Earnings is merely added to the inherent valuation. This is assuming you want to apply valuation measures at all which most successful investors don't.

First Solar: Large Intangible Assets and High PEs Go Together

dicki, I saw a survey about a year ago where about 80% of Germans were willing to pay extra for their electricity if it were to come from renewables. I don't recall how much extra but it was probably about 50%. When faced with the same survey only about 10% of Americans were willing to pay extra.

This illustrates why with the exception of China the US is the most fossil fuel dependent industrialized nation. You would think that some action would be taken with oil at $125. Although energy prices don't have a direct influence on the value of PV due to a subsidized market, they should theoretically force politicians to take action. Also, when prices reach "grid parity" the correlation will be direct.

First Solar: Large Intangible Assets and High PEs Go Together

Check out my article about why oil is likely to goto $400, written when oil was $60, and how FSLR is my peak oil play. An electric car manufacturer or a company with new lithium-ion technology would be better, but I'm still waiting for a Tesla Motors IPO.

seekingalpha.com/artic...

First Solar: Large Intangible Assets and High PEs Go Together

Gumby, I don't expect oil prices to go down until they're so high that many people can't afford to drive. We're still far from those levels. As long as China's economy continues to grow and they continue to subsidize gas prices oil will keep going up.

I didn't realize until last quarter's earnings when margins shrank how high energy prices actually squeeze margins for the short term since sales contracts are at fixed prices but manufacturing costs are variable. This could potentially hit the silicon PV manufacturers hard as they use much more energy in their manufacturing process. In the long term, however, higher energy prices is obviously a positive for solar since it makes PV a better value. Today, that may take the form of new government subsidies as a political response to high energy prices. In the future it will mean we're closer to grid parity.