Promises, promises.
During last week's Blog Talk Radio show, I promised a whole bunch of links. Here they are.
First, I promised to link to information about solar and alternative energy IPOs, as well as a particular alternativ energy stock index. I can't find the particular index I mentioned right now, but there's a ton of informaion about Solar and Alternative Energy Indexes, so here are two of them:
- The Ardour Alternative Energy Index, which includes 125 constituents and a special Solar Energy ETF as well.
- The MAC Solar Energy Index, and its constituents, in case you like to play individual stocks
One's an ETF family, which means you can invest directly, the other is an index, but I'm pretty sure there's an ETF associated with it as well. The laser company I mentioned, whose stock has gotten crushed in the last couple of years, is Newport (NEWP). Only a portion of their business is lasers, but they had been banking heavily on solar, as lasers and optics are used to cut the solar panels and solar cells.
Naturally, none of this is an investment recommendation. It's been a long time since I looked at Newport, and I've done little (er, no) research on either of the ETFs. But it's a good place to follow what the market thinks of solar and alternatives.
And no fair investing, and then begging the government for subsidies or special breaks. (Hear that, Mrs. Pelosi?)
The DOE also has a site on oil shale. I'd strongly recommend printing out and looking at the PDFs on the various issues, including reserves, recoverability, environmental effects, and so on.
And finally, amidst all the talk about the rescue plan, here's a contrarian view, not merely that it's a bad execution of necessary help, but that the whole idea is flawed. These guys are from the fast-rising George Mason University econ department. They're good, and worth reading on a regular basis.
For a well-informed read from the traditional, "we're doing this to prevent 1930-1940 all over again" point of view, which is clearly where Bernanke & Co. are coming from, you can't do much better than these guys.
I'm going to try, but can't promise to pull off, a discussion between these fellows with me as the moderator over on BTR.
And BTR is at a special time this week: 9:30 on Thursday rather than our regular 9:00. I need a little recovery time from the Yom Kippur fast on Thursday.
