Camino Energy

E5G.DE and KHD.TO were removed from their respective indices following their acquisitions and the SOLAR and RELEC indices were rebalanced.   The RELEC index currently has 19 companies, just sufficient to meet limit requirements (i.e individual companies representing over 5% of the index will in the aggregate will not exceed 45% of the index) on modified market cap indices.

The RELEC index is comprised of wholesale producers of electricity, and their equipment suppliers, using renewable energy sources, currently bio-waste, biomass, geothermal, hydro, ocean, and wind.  We do not include diversified utilities that have some renewable generation portfolio and as a result the universe of eligible companies is smaller that those used to comprise the FAN and PWND ETFs.   We made this choice to have a clearer focus on the business of renewable energy.   We’ll keep looking to see if we can expand the companies incuded in the index.

June 18th, 2010 | Category: Indices |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

The current market concerns over European debt have hit clean energy hard.  YTD and over the last 365 days returns for all elements of the clean energy segment, with one exception, have been poor.  Excess returns (i.e. alpha) have been negative across the spectrum except for the LED technologists.  

I identified a group of companies in 2008 that were pursing LEDs as their primary business.   Their businesses seem to be growing and of all the clean energy sector I track they are the only ones with positive excess return over the S&P 500. 

Despite popular conceptions that LEDs are significanly more efficient then CFLs, their form factor, ruggedness, and longevity are translating into successfull products.  And successful products are what create value for longterm investors.   Just look at Apple where the iPhone is now over 40% of their business in just a few years!   I don’t think there is a breakthrough like that in the LED business but there is a pathway (efficiency improvement and cost reductions) that can make this lighting solution compelling.

June 8th, 2010 | Tags: Add new tag | Category: Market commentary |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

In one word, returns.   For three years the main Camino Energy site has been computing returns for:

• Camino’s  five indices,
• Market Comparables (that would be used in a diversified portfolio),
• Sustainable ETFs, and
• actively managed Sustainable Mutual funds.

Suprisingly, the page with this data is  infrequently visited so I have relocated the page to the highest level menu, Market Returns, to create greater visibility to the investment community.  I’ve also expanded the coverage to include a couple of additional ETFs and the nuclear ETFs.

A quick perusal of this year’s returns shows a rocky start for the sustainable business.  While the market comparables (ex commodities) are all positive YTD, the Sustainable Mutual funds and the Wind/Solar ETFs are all negative.  A couple of the broader based ETFs are positive, most notably the PowerShares Global Progressive Transportation (PTRP) ETF is up 7.3% through April 23rd….interesting.

April 26th, 2010 | Tags: PTRP | Category: Indices |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

Suprisingly, after losing 52% of its value from inception until the end of 2009, the iPath carbon GRN is leading all sustainable ETFs and mutual funds this year with a robust 1.4% YTD return. Airshares launched during this debacle and was unable to attract sufficient investment to stick around and stopped trading in August 2009. GRN’s performance is even more surprising given the generally downbeat news for cap and trade in the US driven, IMO, in large part due to the down economy, controversy over climate science, and downward pressure on fuel prices. Even California’s governor, a staunch supporter of cap and trade, is now talking about slowing down the state’s implementation of AB32.

But an even bigger hurdle for cap and trade (other than the horrendous complexity of these programs) is expanded supplies of reasonably priced natural gas. A little bit of substitution of coal by gas in electric generation and gasoline by gas in transportation may yield enough carbon mitigation to moot the cap and trade argument. With this kind of regulatory overhang, investing in carbon trading looks risky.

March 26th, 2010 | Category: Market commentary |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

My web host has decided to make its web environment safer by changing a setting in its web hosting language.   Unfortunately, my graphics package makes extensive use of this feature.  This wouldn’t be so bad if the web host used the latest version of the php programming language so I could update to the latest graphics package.   Catch 22.  We’re all safer but I won’t have any graphics until I move to a different web host or find a solution.   Why don’t I feel better about being safer?

November 30th, 2009 | Category: News |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (1)

The publicly traded fuel cell industry continues to have problems.  The latest change affecting Camino’s index is the delisting of Medis Technologies from the NASDAQ to the Pink Sheets on 8/25/2009.   We have removed Medis from our equal weight index which now contains just 6 firms.    These firms are headquartered in four different countries and have an average market cap of USD 142 million.

September 2nd, 2009 | Tags: FCELL, MDTL | Category: Indices |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (1)

The correction started by the “Panic of 2008″ continued with the broad US market falling until March and then rallying to finish out the first half of 2009 close to neutral.  The S&P closed 7/2 down 0.76%  YTD (excluding dividends). 

In general, sustainable energy stocks followed this pattern but were bid up more then the broader US market and posted some strong gains YTD as shown in the summary below.   In particular, Camino’s LIGHT index posted nearly doubled indicating this strategy may have potential.  See my previous post  about LIGHT and I’ll comment more on this later. 

Even with these gains, this volatile sector still has a long way to go to erase last year’s steep declines.

July 5th, 2009 | Tags: LIGHT | Category: Indices, Market commentary |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

The biofuel index has been updated to reflect the delisting of Aventine (AVR).   Great Plains Renewable Holdings (GPRE)  has been included in the index which still contains nine companies.   Additional updates may be necessary if other index constituents decline futher in market cap or file for Chapter 11 (or its equivalent).

April 12th, 2009 | Tags: GPRE | Category: Indices |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment

A once growing group of public companies continues to shrink.  We have discontinued coverage on Aventine Renewable Enery Holdings (AVR) due to its April 8, 2009 Chapter 11 filing.  It joins Panda Ethanol which was delisted after its Hereford subsidiary filed Chapter 11 on January 23, 2009.  

After these filing there only remain five (5) publicly traded, pure-play corn ethanol companies with market cap greater than USD 10 million.  Only Great Plains Renewable (GPRE) has a market cap greater than USD 50 million.

April 12th, 2009 | Tags: GPRE | Category: Market commentary |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Leave a comment