Solar Stocks Heat Up

Posted on by Adam Feik

Adam Feik - INO.com Contributor - Energies


I wrote about oil refiners – and the phenomenal performance of their stocks – on Monday. Today I'm writing about another energy sector that has been hot the last few weeks; namely, solar stocks.

Let's take First Solar (Nasdaq:FSLR), for example. Here's a stock that's gone from $70/share 6 months ago to $40/share 1 month ago, and now almost back to $60.

FSLR's all-time high is over $300, back in the summer of 2008. The stock spent the rest of '08 crashing, but then stabilized until February 2011, when FSLR peaked around $175 before crashing all the way to $12 in May 2012 (see chart from Yahoo! Finance, below). From that low point, FSLR enjoyed a nice, even, steady uptrend for the next 2 years. On June 20, 2014, when oil peaked at just above $107/barrel, FSLR was trading around $70 per share. FSLR's $30 haircut from June 2014 – January 2015 almost perfectly coincided with oil's big decline. Solar investors, of course, understand that solar becomes a more attractive energy alternative when oil prices are high, and vice versa. Continue reading "Solar Stocks Heat Up" →

So What Did Yellen Actually Say?

Posted on by George Yacik

George Yacik - INO.com Contributor - Fed & Interest Rates


My educated interpretation of what Janet Yellen told the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday boils down to this: The Fed is going to raise interest rates when it is going to raise rates and not one day earlier.

In other words, I don't have any idea, and it's likely she doesn't either. But it's probably not likely to happen in the immediate future, maybe not even this year.

Whether that's a mistake or not is a different matter (I think it is). But it was clear – or rather unclear – that the Fed has no intention of doing anything about raising short-term rates above near-zero anytime soon.

Analysts and pontificators, of course, did their best to put their own spin on what she said (kind of like what I'm doing now). In typical Fed Chair-speak, Yellen provided a bunch of "we might do this – but then again we might not" comments that could mean just about anything. Continue reading "So What Did Yellen Actually Say?" →

3 Reasons Why You Should Be Watching Gold

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Greece has once again "kicked the can down the road," but they may not be out of the woods yet according to the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF, who have all warned Greece that action speaks louder than words.

That brings me to the point of today's blog posting, and that is action speaks louder than words. In our case, it is market action that speaks louder than Fed Chairwoman, Janet Yellen, or any other verbiage that comes out of a politician's mouth.

With that thought in mind, I'm going to take a look at the market action for all the major markets today, with a special look at gold (FOREX:XAUUSDO). I'll give you three reasons why you should be watching this market.

It would appear at the moment that many of the world’s disruptive events like Ukraine, Greece and the Middle East are all in a temporary recessionary mode at the moment. That leaves the markets themselves to determine their trends. Market action will always point the way to the next big moves as opposed to words and promises from world leaders.

Every success with MarketClub,
Adam Hewison
President, INO.com
Co-Creator, MarketClub

Have Google And Yahoo Lost Their Mojo?

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Hello, MarketClub members and traders everywhere! Today I'm going to be looking at 10 well-known stocks and determine what the future holds for them.

Among those 10 stocks, I will be looking at Google and Yahoo and showing you why these two stocks may not be the place to have your money in Q2.

Here are the 10 stocks I'm analyzing in today's video. Continue reading "Have Google And Yahoo Lost Their Mojo?" →

Is It Time To Take Profits On Oil Refining Stocks?

Posted on by Adam Feik

Adam Feik - INO.com Contributor - Energies


Does it sound strange to even think about "taking profits" on anything related to energy?

Well, oil refining companies' stocks have enjoyed quite a run this year. Check out this table summarizing recent returns for 5 selected stocks (total returns through 2/20/15, from Morningstar; returns longer than 1 year are annualized; "since Jan. 15" data from Yahoo! Finance):

If you haven't paid attention to this group, how surprised are you to see a group of oil-related stocks with positive returns over the past 12 months – let alone Tesoro's +82% performance?!!

I've also included the 3-, 5-, 10, and 15-year returns, just because they're so remarkable.

Oil down, refiners up!

Of course, the driving reason for this group's stellar 1-year returns is that oil refiners actually benefit from being able to pay lower prices for crude oil, which is the primary raw material used to make their refined products, such as gasoline. Continue reading "Is It Time To Take Profits On Oil Refining Stocks?" →