Money and Investing Thoughts

Each week I provide a review of the previous week’s performance of the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, symbol NEX. This information is provided by New Energy Finance. The NEX consists of about 90 stocks from 20 countries in seven sectors and is the bogey for the PowerShares Global Clean Energy Fund (PBD: 9.70 0.00 0.00%). These results are for the week ending on Friday.

For the week the NEX lost 9.5%, similar to the NASDAQ, down 8% and somewhat worse than the S&P 500, off 5.9% and AMEX Oil, down 6.2%. This was the 2nd week in a row the NEX dropped greater than 9% and the index is off 24% since the last positive return week, 4 weeks ago. The NEX’s broad international exposure has hindered the results further as foreign markets have declined even faster than the U.S. stock markets.

All sectors in the index were in negative territory for the week with solar power leading the way falling 12%. Evergreen Solar and JA Solar were punished due to exotic stock lending agreements with Lehman Brothers, leaving the lent shares in some kind of limbo. The best performing sector was the ‘renewable other’ consisting primarily of mini-hydro and geothermal companies. This sector was off 1.6%.

At this point the renewable energy sector, as represented by the NEX, is in free fall and has returned to January 2007 valuations. Although the long term prospects for renewable energy are bright, the sector is definitely out of favor at this time. Here are the winners and loser from the sector for the week:

NEX top gainers since 09 Sept 2008
Canadian Hydro Developers KHD + 12.0%
Ebara 6361 + 6.5%
Plug Power PLUG + 6.0%
Zhejiang Yankon Group 600261 + 4.4%
Meidensha Corp. 6508 + 4.1%

NEX top losers since 09 Sept 2008
Evergreen Solar ESLR - 40.2%
Climate Exchange CLE - 28.2%
JA Solar Holdings JASO - 28.1%
Theolia TEO - 26.1%
Medis Technologies MDTL - 25.0%