In attempting to forecast the price of natural gas it's the uncompleted well count, not the drilling rig count, that has some significance. So many wells have been drilled in the last couple years but left uncompleted that the natural gas rig count, which has fallen all the way down to 431 recently, has little meaning. (Source)

The inventory of uncompleted wells in the United States has grown so high that the natural gas rig count could probably drop to zero for a while and it still wouldn't scare United States Natural Gas (UNG) higher.

In light of this investors in natural gas stocks should place focus on well completion rates, well production rates if they can get access to the numbers, and monitor for any signs of significant consumption rate increases. These will be the way to get a sense of where UNG, Chesapeake Energy (CHK), Cheniere

38 million of the 118 million shares outstanding are sold short as of Dec 14th. That's a staggering 32% of GT Advanced Technologies, Inc's shares. Note that the share price of this company is already down to about $3.24 creating a price to book ratio of just 0.9. Here's what I'm wondering: Have the short sellers been waiting until January to close their positions (buy to cover) so that they can avoid paying 2012 taxes on the gains? Should we be buying GTAT shares before these massive positions get closed in January and February?

Before we decide, let's consider for a moment that the short sellers truly believe that GTAT will lose even more of their value over the next few months. Is this likely? Well, to answer this we've got to look at how it could happen. It's not going to happen via surprising write-offs of goodwill. Only 10%

To understand solar investments, or any investments for that matter, it's worthwhile to try to understand the key people that impact the value of those investments.

Imagine for a moment that you are the Chinese government in Beijing. You oversee four times as many citizens as the United States. Many of these citizens are not exactly happy. Uprisings are always a concern and so you must constrain the media, activists, etc. Another concern is that you have too little control over your oil supply. Worse, it's the United States that influences, if not controls, your oil supply. Most of the oil flowing out of the Middle East goes to China and the rest of Asia, but few would argue that the United States has a fair amount of military control in the Middle East.

Ok. So what would you do? Would you walk away from your well publicized solar plan