Batteries or Biodiesel or Both?

Batteries or Biodiesel or Both?

I spend a lot of time researching and thinking about our transportation infrastructure. The fact is we Middle Americans have built kind of an ugly world. A world for cars, spread out wide and covered with pavement.

Throughout most of human history the vast majority of mankind had to walk everywhere it went, all the time. I think our bodies miss walking on some basic level.

The good news is that people have begun to talk about urban sprawl like it’s a bad thing, and to talk about food miles, and to talk about the positives of walkable neighborhoods. Maybe we can avoid paving over more of the earth as we move forward, and maybe we can walk a tiny bit more than we do now.

But we are where we are, and we move into the future from this point forward. We cannot go back and unmake our cities and start over. It is prohibitively expensive and difficult to do so. It’s not going to happen.

Which means we need the means to get around the sprawl in which we live. We can bicycle whenever possible, but cars, buses, scooters, trucks, and airplanes will still be needed to move us and our stuff from place to place.

But our cars, buses, scooters, trucks, and airplanes don’t have to be powered by oil, foreign or domestic. They can be powered in a number of different ways, including compressed air and hydrogen fuel cells. Still, the most likely ways we’ll power our non-human-powered conveyances are batteries and biodiesel.

I’ve written before about the potential of emission-free electric cars. If charged by wind power at night then emission free they will truly be. That’s darned exciting.

There’s still going to be a need, though, to carry people and objects farther than an electric car’s 40 mile (or maybe even 200 mile) charge will go. And that’s where biodiesel comes in.

There are a lot of exciting ways to produce biodiesel. Palm oil is one of the cheapest ways. But one of the most exciting ways - to me, personally - is algae.

Algae has the singular advantage of not taking up land that we would otherwise use for food production. It has the further advantage of being able to draw down CO2, which algae needs as a feedstock. Another feedstock for algae biodiesel production is wastewater. The water that goes down our toilets and drains can be used as a link in a chain that can fuel our long-distance transport needs, while drawing down CO2! How cool is that?

Of course, none of this is as easy as it sounds, but compared to electric cars, biodiesel starts to look easy.

The batteries necessary for electric cars are problematic because of size, weight, duration of charge, quickness of recharge, recycle-ability, scarcity of materials, and other factors besides.

Biodiesel isn't simple either, mind you. But the battery issue begins to seem insurmountable after a while. Biodiesel appears to be just a matter of ongoing tweaking to produce better results.

Biodiesel isn’t emission-free, but it does have the potential to be net zero emission. That is, if the process of creating biodiesel draws down as much CO2 as we put into the atmosphere by burningthe biodiesel then we’ve reached a net zero emission solution. Still, I'd rather not emit the CO2 and other pollutants in the first place. All things being equal, I'll take true zero emission over net zero emission.

The big problem, then is that I don’t know where to invest my money. Should I invest in batteries, and vote for the daily electric world I want to see? Or should I invest in biodiesel - possibly algae produced biodiesel - and vote for the solution that appears to cause the fewest changes to our infrastructure?

Truth be told, I wouldn't mind the 40 mile charge that limits the range of a lot of electric cars, as it would suit my needs and maybe cause some urban shrinkage.

(Urban shrinkage is a great name for a caucasian rap act that sucks.)

I'd still want to be able to rent a biodiesel car on the occasional long weekend, though, and drive a bit outside of my electric zone.

The good news is that we can vote for both.

Now if I can only find publicly traded companies that operate in these areas, that appear to be on the forefront of the technology, and that have good fundamentals.

I'll let you know when I do.

Investing V – Buying a home

In my previous posts about investing I’ve mentioned more than once that buying a home is almost always a great investment. From my own experience I can say without equivocation that buying homes has had more positive economic impact on my life than any other investment I’ve made.

I’m talking about buying a home, here. I’m not talking about buying an investment property. These are two different things.

That being said, the first home I ever bought turned into an investment property, pretty much by accident.

I lost my job in 2000. The company I was working in was going under, and I had plenty of warning. But the only reason I lived where I did was because of the job.

If the job was going away then I wanted to move away.

But I'd just bought a condo 4 months prior.

I had thought that I'd be working and living in the city in question for years, and so buying a home made sense. But with joblessness on the horizon and no great love for the city in question, then buying a home there was looking like NOT my best decision ever.

I could turn around and sell it for what I'd paid for it, but there are closing costs that have to be paid when you're buying or selling, and I didn't want to pay them each time without realizing an offsetting profit.

It was every first-time-homebuyer's nightmare.

I rented it out. Rather, I found a property manager who would rent it out for me. At the price for which it was rented I didn't make a profit, but I didn't lose money, either.

So suddenly I no longer owned a home. Instead I had an investment property.

What’s interesting is that if you have a rental property and can provide a copy of the rental contract to a lender – proving that your costs on your original loan are being met – then you can go out and buy another property in which to live.

I did exactly that. I moved back to my metropolitan area of choice and was able to buy a second condo – this one as my primary residence.

Now each time I purchased a condo – in 2000 and 2001 – I did it using a 30-year-fixed loan from my bank. This was, as far as I was concerned, the only way to buy a home.

Then in 2004 I bought a house. And evidently the rules had changed. My realtor and my finance officer offered me “creative financing.”

I was skeptical, but I read the fine print and asked lots of questions. It was a little iffy, but it was doable. In the end I bought a house using the types of loans that have come under a lot more scrutiny in the last couple years. But I had a plan, and in retrospect it actually appears that I might have known what I was doing.

80% of the purchase price of my house was financed using a 3 year ARM – an Adjustable Rate Mortgage. This gave me a really, really great interest rate – less than 4%, I think – for 3 years. After the 3 years it would begin to fluctuate and almost certainly to trend upward.

The plan was to refinance before the 3 years were up, and this is exactly what I did.

Another 15% of the purchase price of my home was financed using an Interest Only loan. This was the scariest piece, to me. This is a loan that is designed NOT TO BE PAID OFF. You don’t have to pay anything toward the principal of the loan. You just have to pay the interest. Every month. Forever. At the end of each month you would the bank the same amount as the previous month. It’s the debt that never ends.

The plan was to end it. To pay off the principal on that loan as soon as possible, and this is exactly what I did. About 5 months after I bought the house, that interest-only loan was gone, thanks to the sale of my investment property – my first condo – and a bit of money from Savings.

And let me say at this point that my first condo – to which I referred earlier as “every first-time-homebuyer's nightmare” – really worked out well for me. I had not intended to own an investment property, but it paid for its own mortgage each month, and then when I sold it less than 5 years later, I did so at a 23% profit (minus closing costs and some sales-prep work I had done. It was probably a 14% or 15% net profit).

Oh, the remaining 5% of my house was financed using some of the proceeds of the sale of my second condo. And that turned out to be another great investment. I sold it at a 37% profit (minus closing costs, etc. It was probably at least a 30% net profit, though).

Since refinancing a year ago I have also made an effort to pay down additional principal on my new 30-year-fixed mortgage whenever possible. As of this writing I stand to get somewhere between $40,000 and $55,000 out of my home if I were to sell it today.

I got lucky. Or I was the right combination of lucky and careful and attentive.

If I had not been careful and attentive – and didn’t really understand or care that I had a 3 year ARM and an Interest Only Loan – then this would have gone badly for me. I would have had a mountain of debt and rising monthly payments. I would have metaphorically drowned.

So is Creative Financing a bad thing? Are banks to blame for offering these kinds of loans?

I have to say no. My situation is proof that one can use these kinds of loans to one’s own advantage and come out ahead.

But you have to have a plan that involves GETTING RID OF THOSE LOANS. And in retrospect it looks like a lot of people got those types of loans without having a plan to get rid of them.

That being said, a lot of the people who are now defaulting on these types of loans are people who had bad credit. Banks gave these types of loans to people who had a bad track record of dealing with money.

Most disturbing of all, the banks were able to bundle these somewhat-iffy-loans-to-people-with-less-than-perfect-credit into investment securities. And the ratings agencies – for-profit companies whose job it is to rate investment securities – rated these investment securities as really good and really safe investments: Triple-A rated securities.

And so a lot of investment companies, banks, and even countries put money into these securities.

Thus the mortgage crisis was born. When homebuyers’ ARMs started adjusting upward and the homebuyers in question started defaulting on payments then these triple-A rated securities started producing less-than-triple-A results. And because so many entities had invested in these securities, the repercussions have been felt everywhere.

I’ve gone pretty far afield, here. I intended to write a little piece using my own story to illustrate why owning a home is the best real estate investment one can make. Instead I've tried to explain the mortgage crisis while I'm at it. Let's get back to the point:

I could have been renting for the last 8 years, but by owning (and buying and selling with a bit of luck) I find myself with $40,000 to $55,000 in home equity.

That’s if I sold the home today, though. And because of the mortgage crisis I have no plans to sell my home today. It’s not a good time to sell.

But it’s a great time to buy! Buying a home is a great investment, as I hope I’ve demonstrated. And thanks to the mortgage crisis home prices have been driven down. If you don’t already own a home then I strongly suggest you look into it.

Voting with your money - part II: Wind Power

In a previous post I began my spiel about Voting with your money. The basic concept is easy, so I’ll not belabor the point.

The thing is, it can be surprisingly difficult to determine if you’ll be Doing Good while also doing well by investing in a given stock.

Wind Power is my example in this case.

Investing in Wind Power is theoretically Doing Good, as wind power is good for the environment.

And investing in wind power should allow the investor to be doing well, as all indications are that it’s a serious growth industry.

But are either of these things absolutely certain?

Let's focus first on my quest to do well with my money.

I’m very frustrated in my search for wind stocks in which to invest. Most wind stocks don't have good fundamentals. There's really only two wind-related stocks with good fundamentals that I can find being traded on American stock markets:

American Superconductor Corporation (NasdaqGM: AMSC)

and

Zoltek Companies Inc. (NasdaqGS: ZOLT)

AMSC looks pretty solid in the long term. Its P/B is a little high, but wind is expanding like mad in the US. Maybe it's worth it.

ZOLT has had some serious issues this quarter, so I'm waiting to see their new P/B before I invest. Really I'm waiting to see their revised balance sheet. (And, of course, I'm waiting to see if there's something else I'm willing to sell in order to buy some shares in ZOLT.)

I'm not certain enough of either of these companies. I'd rather invest in a more established player in the wind market.

There are a couple other companies out there to consider:

Owens Corning (NYSE: OC)

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)

These companies are big, established companies, which hopefully explains the fact that their debt outweighs their cash, while at the same time their assets outweigh their liabilities. These are stocks in which to take long positions.

OC makes a lot of building products, and as such they've been adversely affected by the housing bust. They seem to have adjusted, so it may be a good buy. Windmill-blades are made of fiberglass, so this is a wind play, although it’s not a purely wind play.

GE, on the other hand, is also not a purely wind play. In fact, GE is the poster-child for what Eisenhower was talking about when he coined the phrase "military-industrial complex".

This brings us around to my quest to Do Good with my money.

According to Yahoo! Finance "General Electric Company (GE) operates as a technology, media, and financial services company worldwide. It operates through four segments: GE Capital, Energy Infrastructure, Technology Infrastructure, and NBC Universal."

GE manufactures aircraft for the military, but I guess this falls under the general heading of “Technology”. This isn't an inherently bad thing, but it makes me question the impartiality of their media division.

GE’s aircraft manufacturing gives them a leg up in the wind business. I understand that GE is one of the biggest manufacturers of turbines for windmills. This is what makes them a good wind play, if not a pure wind play.

GE manufacturing's environmental record is not good, though. They’re moving slowly to clean up a section of the Hudson in which they were polluting for decades, and may be polluting still. This is just the biggest example of their environmental missteps.

GE has an ad campaign - ecomagination - that I would classify as Greenwashing.

And yet, when I go out and buy a compact fluorescent bulb, it will probably be a GE product that I buy. (I can't find dimmable CFBs from any other company). Also, I personally consume a lot of GE television through NBC Universal, which owns NBC and all NBC-branded channels, as well as USA Network and the SciFi Channel (just to name a few cable channels they own. There are more).

I guess GE is, at the end of the day, another company that has huge potential to change the world, one way or another.

And I'm sure that my portfolio would be doing well, long-term, should I invest in GE.

At present, though, I'm going to refrain from taking a long position in GE, even if it is one of the better bets in wind energy. I think that they may be doing more harm than good, overall.

I’ll still buy their compact fluorescent bulbs, though. I can still encourage them to Do Good.

Voting with your money - part I: Wal-Mart

No readers have pointed this out yet, but it strikes me that I started this blog with lofty ideals of changing the world, but then since then I've largely talked about investing (with the occasional diversion into the world of personal transport).

So what does investing have to do with changing the world for the better?

It's about voting with your money.

This is a concept I've been attempting to enact in my personal life for some years. Basically, I try not to give my money to people or corporations that I think are actively making the world worse.

I stopped going to McDonald's back when they were still using styrofoam containers for everything. When they moved to paper and cardboard I relented a bit, and I very occassionally go there now. There are times when you're hungry and there's nothing so fast and convenient as a McDonald's

Similarly, I didn't go to Wal-Mart for a long time, but now that Wal-Mart is becoming more environmentally friendly I've begun to shop there again, on occasion.

I'm known by some to have an anti-corporate stance, but that's largely because I see many corporations as doing more harm than good. When profit is their only goal then they are capable of doing a lot of damage in the process of realizing that goal.

Corporations have huge power to effect change. And often it's not a change for the better.

But if it is a change for the better, then that's very cool. Because - again - corporations have huge power to effect change.

At the end of the day, though, profit remains their main concern.

Amazingly enough, Wal-Mart appears to be not just greenwashing their corporate image (although I'm sure they don't mind the makeover), but they seem to be realizing some of the economic advantages of going green.

The link above mentions one area where Wal-Mart's behavior is not getting any greener, but it's an area where most retailers' behavior is not getting any greener, so I don't think it's fair to single out Wal-Mart for criticism.

The area in question? Bottled water.

Bottled water is intrinsically bad for the environment - really, any drink in a plastic bottle (that's likely to be thrown away instead of recycled) is bad for the environment. But retailers are going to keep selling it, because people will still buy it.

Really, all the retailers are just going with the flow on this one. The market currently dictates that they need to stock and sell bottled water.

But we are the market.

Here's another thing we can do to make a difference, then. Not only can where we shop make a difference. What we buy can make a difference. Most importantly, what we DON'T buy can make a difference.

We are the market. We dictate that stores need to stock and sell bottled water. And we can change this. We can stop buying it.

If people don't buy it, eventually they'll stop selling it.

This is intended as just one example. What I'm trying to say is this: How we spend our money (0r how we don't) is important, and it makes a difference.

What does this have to do with investing? Well, the same principle applies when buying stock.

Specifically, this same principle is involved in my decision to focus on cleantech stocks, and in my decision not to invest yet in Wind Power, even though every indication is that Wind Power is going to be huge, AND Wind Power is great for the environment.

There are some other factors in play.

Look forward to "Voting with your money - part II: Wind Power" for a full explanation.

Investing III - Part 2 - Lesson Update

In an earlier post I wrote about a couple of stocks I've bought with low Price to Book ratios. One of those stocks - as of that writing - had a P/B of 0.86.

As of this writing it has a P/B of 1.01.

The good news is that the price did come up some. Before the market opened it had climbed to a P/B of 0.89.

However the company has just released it's quarterly report, and evidently the numbers aren't great. In fact, the book value of the company has decreased a bit, resulting in the new P/B of 1.01.

As best I can determine, the Book value will not change for another quarter. The price will, of course, shift daily.

The good news is, then, that this stock's P/B looks a bit more healthy.

The bad news is that the stock is still worth less than it was when I bought it (although more than it was last week).

Disclosure: I'm talking about Plug Power Inc (NasdaqGM: PLUG). I own 100 shares. I know I bought my shares for $2.62 per share. I must have bought my shares in late June.

Quoting Yahoo! Finance, PLUG is a "development stage company" that make Fuel Cell and other energy storage devices. "Development stage" means that if you're going to invest, you should take a long position. It's going to be a while before the company is profitable.

I'm not much of a long position investor. But I know energy storage is going to be one of the biggest issues in the future. I guess I find myself taking a longer position in this one, now. The fundamentals still look good. I think the stock will go up.

That being said, my sell order is in for $4 a share.

Investing IV - Short and Long

Inspired by a reader and commentator, I will now pretend to know something about short and long positions.

I've read up on selling short previously. I had to in order to try to understand the market machinations of Eliza in The Baroque Cycle.

Having read up on the practice again just now, I must confess that I'm no closer to understanding the concept of selling short. It's really quite bizarre, and it opens up the market to all manner of tomfoolery.

If the wikipedia article on the subject of short selling is to be believed, "In finance, short selling or 'shorting' is the practice of selling securities the seller does not own, in the hope of repurchasing them later at a lower price."

I hit the phrase "selling securities the seller does not own" and I'm done. I've read the rest of the article. I understand it in general. I know that there's ways to profit from selling a stock short. All I know is I want no part of it. I also want no part of buying or selling options or trading on margin.

These things are very far removed from the simple practice of investing in a stock you believe in.

But when you invest in a stock, does that mean you believe in it for the long term, or the short term? Are you taking a long position, or a short position?

If you hear someone talking about taking a short position on a stock, it does not necessarily mean that they're going to sell the stock short (although it might).

In simplest terms, taking a short position means you think the stock is going to go down soon. So if you own it then you probably want to sell it before it does go down. When it goes down as much as you think it will then that's a good time to buy it again.

An investor saying that they're taking a short position on a stock, then, really means that they've sold it or they're selling it, but they're keeping their eye on it and will buy it again once it's gone as low as they think it possibly will.

(Technically short sellers mean the same thing, only they never owned the stock in the first place, and after they've bought back at a lower price the stock they just sold then they still won't own it. Short sellers play with other people's shares and give them back when they're done. Yes, I acknowledge that this makes no sense.)

Similarly, taking a long position on a stock means that you're going to buy it now and hold onto it for a long time, as you think it's going to go generally up for a good long while. Maybe you'll sell it, eventually. Maybe you'll keep it forever, accepting dividend checks, and eventually you'll give your long-position stock to your descendants.

Now I described my early attempts at investment back in Investing II. I bought and sold the same stock a few times in a relatively short period of time. I didn't trust that the stock would go up and up and up indefinitely, so I guess I'd have to say that I took a short position in that stock.

My investment strategy now is not that different from then, except that now when I find a company I like, I look at its fundamentals. If it has good fundamentals then I put it on a watch list with some notes as to how much to pay for it (really, how little to pay for it) and how much I want to get for it when I sell.

Because I'm going to sell it. I'm not going to keep it indefinitely.

This watch list comes in handy when one of the stocks I own rises to the point that it's time to sell.

In general, I don't take a long position in anything. The stock market is full of lemmings (many of them short-selling lemmings) and they can't be trusted to allow companies that deserve it (and only companies that deserve it) to rise in value.

So instead of buying stock in companies that I think are going to do great forever, I buy stock in companies that I think are going to do better than they're doing now.

Also, when I buy a stock through my online stock trading service at a price of X dollars, I immediately - IMMEDIATELY - turn around and put a sell order in for that same stock.

Not that I want to sell at the market rate. Oh no no no no no. I put in a Limit order to sell at no less than 200% of X dollars. Or 300% if I think it's going to do particularly well.

I can go back and modify my Limit orders later.

Let me give a real-world example: Comverge. Stock ticker of COMV. This is a stock that I've bought and sold previously. Within the last 6 months, in fact. As of this writing I have no position on this stock. That is, I do not own it. It is, however, on my watch list. (You could say I have a short position on this stock, technically.)

But as I said, I have owned it previously. I bought COMV at 11 and change. I put in a Limit order to sell at 32, because it had gone that high before and I was and am an incurable optimist.

It went down. It came back up. It never went anywhere near 32.

I revised my estimates and modified my Limit order to sell at 19.

But it never went anywhere terribly close to 19...

Meanwhile, there was some item on my watch list that had come down to the point that I wanted to buy it. And the grass is always greener, right? Or those two birds in the bush look a lot better than the bird I have in my hand, or something...

I modified my limit again and sold at a little under 14. I made something like a 24% profit. (Minus brokerage fees, so it was really a few percent less.)

Of course, it then went to $14.25 and I kicked myself, because I could have had a 27% profit...

...And, of course, if it had continued to go up to 19 or 32 then I would have been most unhappy with myself...

...But it didn't. It turns out my 24% profit was well-timed. As of this writing COMV is trading below 9 dollars a share.

It's on my watch list, and I'm staring at it.

The last couple months have been less than stellar for the markets, though. Of the stocks I own just now, all but one of them is currently worth less than I paid for them. There's nothing I own that I'm willing to sell in order to buy COMV just now. I could, of course, deposit more cash in my trading account and buy some COMV stock, but I've put all the money into the stock market that I'm going to, at least at this time.

(Readers with good memories know that overall I've lost 20% of the money I've invested. I'm not investing more until I see some evidence that I know what I'm doing.)

The one stock that I could sell at a profit? I guess I do have a long position on that one. Sort of. Can I call it a long position when I have already put in a Limit sell order? (Right now it's worth 113% of what I paid for it. My sell order is for 241%.)

I guess I just have a position in that stock. Not a short position. Not a long position. But I have a position.

We'll see how I do.

Investing III - Lesson still being learned

In my last post I spent a certain amount of time talking about stock fundamentals, notably Price/Book. I also disclosed that a couple of the stocks I own just now have a P/B of less than 1. Today's follow-up post, then, addresses the question of how it is possible for a stock to have a P/B of less than 1.

It comes down to this: Speculation.

The stock market, at its most fundamental level, is not about assigning value to companies and stocks as they exist today through the invisible hand of the marketplace. If it was then every company would have a P/B of roughly 1.

No, instead the stock market is really about assigning value to companies and stocks as they MIGHT exist TOMORROW through the invisible hand of the marketplace.

When you buy a stock today that you think will be worth more in the future, then your action of buying the stock will probably cause that stock's value to go up, slightly. Especially if a lot of other people come to the same conclusion at the same time and you're all trying to buy the same stock. As you bid against each other the stock rises in price, until you collectively decide what the maximum is that you're willing to pay today for a stock that, hopefully, will still be worth more tomorrow.

It's the same when you sell. If you decide today that a stock you own has reached its maximum value (or its maximum value for the near future, anyway) then you try to sell it. And your action of selling the stock will probably cause that stock's value to go down, slightly. And again, if a lot of other people come to the same conclusion at the same time and you're all trying to sell the same stock, then as you bid against each other the stock lowers in price, until you collectively decide what the minimum is that you're willing to accept today for a stock that may not be worth as much tomorrow.

It's a lot like lemmings, sometimes. The wisdom of crowds can be replaced with the madness of crowds very quickly.

What does this have to do with Price/Book? Again, it's speculation. Basically, there are stocks out there that buyers and sellers speculate will be worth significantly less or significantly more tomorrow than they are today. And when this happens the P/B begins to drift significantly away from 1. Effectively, they're speculating that the Book value is going to change - that the company is going to have a net worth Tomorrow that is greater or less than its net worth today.

It's still odd to see the P/B drift too far away from 1, but it happens.

How often does this happen? Well, it depends on the industry.

Cleantech stocks are all the buzz right now, so it's not uncommon to see them with a P/B of 5 or more. It's the same with internet stocks - last decade's buzz - but to a lesser degree. Still, in both cases investors seem to think the net worth is going to go up. A lot.

What about more mainstream stocks? Well, let's look at Dow Jones.

The Dow Jones Composite Index is comprised of 65 stocks. I've checked the fundamentals of every 5th of those 65 stocks in order to come up with 13 representative (hopefully) P/B ratios. Of those 13 stocks, one of them had a P/B of more than 5. Another had a P/B of less than 1. The other eleven, obviously, each had a P/B between 1 and 5.

Let's break it down further:

P/B between 0 and 1: 1
P/B between 1 and 2: 3
P/B between 2 and 3: 4
P/B between 3 and 4: 2
P/B between 4 and 5: 2
P/B between 5 and 6: 0
P/B between 6 and 7: 1

I think I can safely say in a bell-curve kinda way that stocks with a P/B of less than 1 or more than 5 are outliers.

I'm still trying to figure out how to use this knowledge. As the title suggests, this is a lesson still being learned. In my previous post, though, I've shown one application for this knowledge: Showing when a stock is over-valued.

Can it be used the other way? Can the P/B be used to show when a stock is under-valued?

And if a stock is under-valued, shouldn't one buy it?

Maybe not. I'm in the midst of finding out, though.

Operating on the theory that an under-valued stock is maybe worth buying, I have purchased a few shares in a couple of stocks with P/B ratios of less than 1. One has a P/B of 0.86 and the other has a P/B of 0.21.

If these stocks are simply under-valued then one day - hopefully a day in the near future - their value will rise until their P/B approaches 1. When that happens I will stand to make a profit should I choose to sell.

The problem is this: Maybe they're under-valued for a reason. And if they're under-valued for a reason then they very well may continue to decline in value.

That being said, I'm sticking to my investment rules. I'm not investing money I can't afford to lose, I've looked at the fundamentals (Both of the stocks in question have positive balance sheets and more cash than debt), and I'm reasonably diversified (These aren't the only stocks I own).

If these stocks go the way of the dodo then I'll still have some other investments, and I'll have learned something. The fundamentals seem to indicate that these stocks are not on the brink of extinction, though.

The worry is that the other people trading these stocks know more than I do - which is almost certainly the case. These stocks are under-valued for a reason, probably. They can't have been driven down in price purely by speculation.

The madness of crowds is a strange thing, though. Maybe my stocks have been dragged down when they shouldn't have been.

Whatever the outcome, I'll let you know.

Investing II - Lessons Learned

As I said in yesterday's post, today we'll talk about my limited experience investing in the stock market. Before I do, let me reiterate that the best investments are getting out of debt, starting a savings account, buying a home (and paying that home off as quickly as you comfortably can), and starting a retirement account. They're not as high-return as some stocks, I supppose, and responsible investment of that sort is just kind of boring, really. But these are still the best, most guaranteed long-term investments you can make (even in the midst of the mortgage crisis, which is a topic I'll have to write about one of these days).

For now, though, let's talk stocks.

I'm a complete amateur investor, and it shows. I doubled my money on some lucky hunches, then lost over 75% of what I had. Starting over with the remaining 40% or so of what I started with I've then doubled that again. For those of you following at home that means that right now I have about 80% of what I started with. Overall, then, the stock market has been a losing proposition for me, but I've learned a thing or two in the process, and I haven't lost everything.

What have I learned? I've learned not to put all of my eggs in one basket, and I've learned to look at the Fundamentals.

Eggs

When I started out I put all of my eggs in one basket, largely because I just didn't have that many eggs. And I did okay. I chose a stock that (A) I believed in and (B) fluctuated a lot within a certain range. I used all the money I had and bought when it was at the low end of the range, sold when it was at the high end. I did that a couple times, and I had doubled my money! Yay!

So I bought again when it was at the low end of its typical range of motion, expecting to make a nice profit when it went up again.

It didn't go up again. In fact, it discovered a new low end to its range of motion.

And there it languished. For years. I stopped paying attention after a while.

Then I started hearing about Green Investing. I want to be rich, sure, but I want to get rich while making the world a better place in the process. Green Investing sounded like the thing for me.

So I sold the stock I had at a loss. I'd heard about a few other stocks that looked interesting to me, and I tried again. I found a penny stock I liked, and I did the same trick as before. I looked at its range of motion. I bought low and sold high. And then I diversified.

Which is good, because when I tried that trick again with the penny stock in question, I lost my shirt. As of this writing I've lost over 98% of what I currently have invested in that particular penny stock. I'm holding onto the stock because it would cost more to sell than the stock itself is worth.

But having diversified, I've survived. In fact, I've made enough from my other investments to set off my losses. And I've learned a valuable lesson about penny stocks: Look at the fundamentals.

Fundamentals

Penny stocks are very tempting, because they don't cost a lot to invest in, and they sometimes take off and have a huge rate of return.

But sometimes - a lot of the time (really, the vast majority of the time) - they don't. They stay penny stocks forever. They lose value. They eventually wink out of existence like the barely burning kindling they always were.

How can you tell if a given stock is a barely burning piece of kindling being kept alive purely by someone blowing on it all the time, or if it's a piece of kindling strategically laid at the base of a well-laid bonfire waiting to happen?

There is a LOT of information in the statistics of a given stock. That being said, I really look at only 3 things:

• Assets and Cash
• Liabilities and Debt
• Price per Book (P/B)

The first two items are what you really need to look at on a penny stock. If it has more Cash and Assets than it has Debt and Liabilites then the management of that company has some wood to throw on the fire. If the opposite is true then you know they're out of wood and the fire is about to go out.

The reason my favored penny stock has succumbed to a dull red ember is because they're out of wood. They've got a great product. They've got contracts to provide that product to buyers. But they don't have adequate capital to actually produce and deliver the product.

So that turned out to be money spent on learning to look at the Fundamentals.

I'm now dabbling in stocks whose balance sheets are positive. That doesn't make them guaranteed to go up, but it does significantly reduce the likelihood of them winking completely out of existence.

Okay, so what about the other fundamental statistic I look at when choosing stock? What about Price per Book? What is it and why do I look at it?

Well, the Price is the price itself of the company's stock. And the Book is the book value of the assets of the company, like the blue book value of your car. Price per Book, then is the total value of the stock divided by the total value of the company.

Simple. Okay, how do we use this?

Here's an example. Syntroleum. Ticker symbol SYNM. This is a company that, among other things, has a joint deal with Tyson Foods to produce "clean renewable synthetic diesel and jet fuel using low grade fats and greases as feedstock".

They make diesel fuel from Tyson's waste. How cool is that?

And they have a positive balance sheet! They have no debt and millions of dollars in the bank! Clearly, we should all go and invest in this stock, right?

Not necessarily.

Why not? Because a lot of other people already have. We may have missed the boat on this one.

SYNM's P/B is 26.23 as of this writing. That means that the stock is worth over 26 times more than the assets of the company. And the stock is selling at $1.79 per share. That means the assets of the company are worth a little over $0.07 per share.

Now, a P/B of 1 to 5 is pretty reasonable, and a P/B of up to 10 is probably pretty acceptable, but a little more risky. Anything with a P/B over 10 and I'm very skeptical.

If SYNM ever comes down to $0.70 or so, I'm all over it. It will still have a P/B of 10 or so, but that's at least entering the realm of the less ridiculous.

What am I currently invested in, you ask? Well, for liability reasons I'm not going to tell you. If I ever find myself writing about a stock I actually own then I'll disclose that fact, of course.

I will tell you that all of my stocks are generally in the realm of Cleantech / Green Investing, and that none of them have a P/B of more than 3.

And a couple of them have a P/B of less than 1.

How is that possible? Well, that's a topic for my next post on investing, I suppose.

Investing I - Gambling: not an Investment Strategy

Like most everyone, I have my dream of what I will do someday when my ship comes in. When I win the lottery. When I find that stock that's goes through the roof. When a hermit uncle that I never knew existed dies and leaves me several million dollars for no readily apparent reason. When I invent something simple that everyone wants and needs. When I write the great 21st-century novel and Hollywood throws money at me for the film rights. When I strike it rich at the casino...

What I find interesting is that we all have these dreams.

Some people with these dreams are busy actively pursuing them. They're writing their novels. They're inventing their gizmos. They're trying out for American Idol.

Me? I'm investing.

Mostly I'm investing in my house. I own my own home. It's in a relatively urban area, so the property values aren't declining like they are in the suburbs. I'm doing okay.

Real Estate - Real Estate in which I live - has been good to me.

And really, I'm just saying to you what any investment advisor would say:

• Work to get out of debt, especially credit card debt.
• When you've paid your credit cards off then put some money - several months worth of living expenses - into savings.
• Buy a home (and pay it off as quickly as you comfortably can).
• Start a retirement account.

Well, see, I've done all those things. And the economic advisors are right. These are the right things to do, absolutely.

But then what? What do we do to attain our unreasonable dreams of wealth?

Well, I'm not writing my novel. Nor am I trying out for Idol anytime soon. Instead I'm investing.

Here's the point where other authors tell you how they struck it rich on the stock market and you can too! Just follow these simple rules!

No. Because I haven't struck it rich on the stock market, and I may never strike it rich.

And you don't have to buy my book to learn what I've learned. This blog is free to all to read.

But when I write about investing then that's what I'll be telling you: What I've learned so far.

So what have I learned so far?

Well, first and foremost don't invest any money you can't afford to lose, because you might lose it. Make sure you've taken care of the bullet-points above, and are continuing to take care of the bullet-points above, before you invest any additional money anywhere else.

Second, the lottery is a losing investment. Duh. I mean, this is not a revelation.

That being said, I do play the lottery a little. It's stupid, I know. The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math or are overly optimistic.

Well, I'm pretty good at math. I play the lottery because - you guessed it - I'm overly optimistic, and because I actively engage in a certain amount of magical thinking: If I play the lottery and lose then maybe I'll be lucky in other parts of my life.

And it appears to be working. I seem to be lucky in all the ways that matter. I'm not rich but I'm happy, and that's what matters. Enough is as good as a feast.

Still, let's dispense with magical thinking for a moment and look at the lottery with the semi-critical eye of one who plays it. From my experience, I can tell you this: I have lost more money than I have won on the lottery.

That's okay, because I've stuck to my first rule of investing; Don't invest any money you can't afford to lose (which is good because I've lost almost all of it).

When you invest in the lottery, you're almost certainly not going to benefit from it monetarily. May it bring you joy in other ways, but I can pretty much guarantee you it will not bring you riches.

It brings me some kind of joy when I lose, because of the magical thinking of which I've spoken. Also, there's a kind of anticipation at finding out the results of the next drawing. There's always the very minor possibility that I might win this time. A feeling that maybe today is the day! And then I pull up the lottery's website and see that, in fact, today is not the day. But that's okay, too.

If you think of the lottery as an entertainment experience - like going to a movie, say - and you get some kind of enjoyment out of the experience then good for you. Stick to the first rule of investing, though. Don't spend money you can't afford to spend.

The same thing goes for horse-racing, casinos, poker tournaments, etc. In all of these situations the odds are against you, and when you lose you will have nothing to show for it. As long as it's all money from your entertainment budget and not from your retirement or your kids' college fund then you're fine. Gambling can be an entertaining and enjoyable activity, but it's not an investment strategy.

The stock market is different. Theoretically when you invest in a stock then you're investing in something real. Even if it turns out to be a losing bet - let's say the stock you buy loses 50% of it's value - then you still have something to show for your money. In the case I just mentioned you can sell the stock and still have 50% of the money with which you started. That's not great, but it's infinitely more money than you'll walk away with if you lose at the lottery, at the track, at the casino...

So we'll talk about the stock market. Next time.