John Petersen's  Instablog

I can be a bit compulsive when it comes to slicing and dicing market data for Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) because of the size of my personal holdings. While I've published monthly trading data in tabular form in other Instablogs, the following graph that shows the month-to-month trading volume progression since January 2008 with an exponential trendline overlay offers a far better view than a table ever could.

(click to enlarge)

Disclosure: I am long AXPW.OB.

One of the more important measures investors consider when analyzing a stock is it's relative liquidity. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes you need to dig a little deeper. The following table identifies the 16 companies in my current tracking list and ranks them in order of declining liquidity as measured by the number of times per year their issued and outstanding stock turns over in the open market.

As a general rule, companies toward the top of the list have a lot of interest from hot money and companies toward the bottom have little or no interest from hot money.

	Trading	Outstanding	Annual	Turnover
	Symbol	Shares	Volume	Frequency
A123 Systems	AONE	146,862,868	719,888,700	4.90
Exide Technologies	XIDE	78,283,690	248,781,500	3.18
Enersys	ENS	47,742,565	138,563,100	2.90
Tesla Motors	TSLA	104,604,044	299,374,900	2.86
Johnson Controls	JCI	680,455,203	1,441,801,800	2.12
Maxwell Technologies	MXWL	28,212,494	59,471,900	2.11
Active Power	ACPW	95,427,235	167,400,100	1.75
Kandi Technologies	KNDI	27,447,593	29,572,000	1.08
UQM Technologies	UQM	36,531,530	36,241,900	0.99
China BAK Battery	CBAK	63,816,276	54,441,200	0.85
Valence Technology	VLNC	169,976,618	144,226,400	0.85
Altair Nanotechnologies	ALTI	69,452,487	50,895,900	0.73
Axion Power	AXPW.OB	113,211,091	78,538,200	0.69
ZBB Energy	ZBB	41,055,079	28,436,600	0.69
Ultralife Corporation	ULBI	17,360,435	11,280,600	0.65
Highpower International	HPJ	13,582,106	6,188,700	0.46

While Turnover Frequency is not an obvious metric for retail investors, it is a critical pricing consideration when a company is negotiating deal terms for a new offering and the general rule is the lower the Turnover Frequency, the higher the discount.

Disclosure: I am long AXPW.OB.

The most recent SAI Chart of the Day, Paul Graham's Startup Curve, was far too accurate to be funny. It shows his view of the process startup companies must go through on their way to becoming viable business enterprises. While I've used the Gartner Group's Hype Cycle graph to describe the process for several years, I think the Startup Curve is even closer to the truth. So without further adieu here it is:

The good news for investors is that I think many companies in the energy storage sector are somewhere in the Wiggles of False Hope and appoaching The Promised Land. The bad news is the Wiggles of False Hope can last longer than many investors imagine. That makes attention to detail and recognition of progress essential character traits for elephant hunters. The process takes time and can't be rushed, but once the major technical risks are past, the payoff for long-suffering patience can be enormous.