July Hiatus: Howard Lindzon on The Best Trade of His Life

While I'm on my July blogging hiatus, I'd thought I'd share with you a few posts from friends whose thought leadership I admire. Here's Howard Lindzon on The Best Trade of His Life. Love the line: "Not all trades are for money. Sometimes you just need to really change things up, even when they are going well."

San Diego/Coronado – The Best Trade of My Life

I talk a lot about stocks, markets and investing, but the best trade of my life was a move.

In the summer of 2009, Ellen and I picked up a rental sign off a lawn on B. Avenue on Coronado and walked into the house and made an offer. The kids were at summer camp. We would have some explaining to do.

We had not rented our home in Phoenix, had not thought through schools,logistics, friends and family, but it just felt right.

That trade set in motion some fantastic things.

We became renters ourselves and a one car family. I walked to work. The kids learned to ride bikes and walked to school.

In 2010, despite the math of renting over owning, we bought a home. The month we bought, turned out to be a low in housing. I had to sell some Buddy Media stock in order to buy the home, because neither my dog Bagel nor I qualified anymore for a loan (that was a bad trade within the trend of the big trade :) ).

Not all trades are for money. Sometimes you just need to really change things up, even when they are going well.

What was your best trade and/or a trade you are looking to make?

...

Howard Lindzon is co-founder and CEO of StockTwits and he blogs at HowardLindzon.com

Is It Time for Clean Energy Investing to Go Online?

Longtime readers of The Green Skeptic will recall that back in 2008, I was working on a start-up venture that became the unfortunate victim of the market collapse coupled with, as Andy Swan kept reminding me every time it dipped, the plummeting price of oil after an all-time high of $147 per barrel in the summer of '08.

The idea, which was called "Seat 28B" for a time and VerdeInvesting towards the end, was to build a web marketplace to reduce the barriers to entry for retail investors wanting to help fund green energy projects and companies.

It was an idea that in the fall of 2008 was "too soon to start."

Luckily, we were also too small to fail, to use StockTwits co-founder Howard Lindzon's phrase, and I finally laid the idea to rest about a year after we started.

From its ashes, however, emerged VerdeStrategy, a consulting and advisory firm that has helped dozens of companies articulate their value proposition, prepare for investor pitches and capital raises, and better market their products and services.

But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking my original idea was still valid; it's just that the timing sucked.

So when Spring Ventures's Nick Allen, speaking at SXSW ECO, mentioned Solar Mosaic, I was delighted to see someone implementing one component of what we were thinking -- community-based solar projects with financing provided, in part, by peers and neighbors.

Solar Mosaic is creating what they call "a revolutionary new way for communities to come together and create solar projects on the roofs of local community centers, schools and places of worship."

They hope to "democratize" solar energy development and reduce projects costs through their online peer-to-peer lending system that allows individuals to invest in solar projects in their communities at as little as $100.

I think of them as a Kiva for solar projects.

This week, Solar Mosaic held a groundbreaking ceremony for its first big project: the Asian Resource Center (ARC), in the heart of Oakland's Chinatown, is the first site in Oakland to go solar by raising money on the Solar Mosaic platform. ARC, a non-profit business center, is building a 28.8 kW solar installation that will save the building an estimated $112,684 over the lifetime of the lease.

If Solar Mosaic is the Kiva for community solar projects, OnGreen, is the KickStarter or AngelList for a wider variety of cleantech deals.  OnGreen lists deals of varying sizes and persuasions in its Marketplace section and hopes to become "the world's largest clean-tech social marketplace - brokering deals all across the globe."

Other online marketplaces for social, green, and sustainable goods and services have been popping up as well, including Mission Markets, Microplace, as well as personal peer-to-peer lending sites like Prosper.com.

It remains to be seen whether clean energy investors will flock to crowdfunding opportunities or whether the projects and capital needs can actually be met through such vehicles, but I'm delighted to watch and see whether my "too soon to start" idea for a cleantech focused web marketplace finally has some legs.

Then again, perhaps it's time to dust off the old VerdeInvesting business plan and get back in the game.

Energy Transition and America's Future: Interview with Gregor MacDonald

Gregor MacDonald

For those of you who follow Gregor MacDonald (@gregormacdonald) on Twitter or read his excellent blog, Gregor.us, or were fortunate enough to catch his subscription-only newsletter and weekly web-TV program while it lasted on StockTwits, you know Gregor represents a thoughtful, studied voice on energy transition and possesses a macroview of the global economy.   

Currently, he's turning his attention to long-form journalism and is working on a piece addressing the global transition back to coal, which should be an important work.

I interviewed Gregor to get his insights on energy (especially renewables, coal, and nuclear) and our future.

GS: You recently expressed the opinion that renewables are going to replace nuclear. How far down the path are we towards a real energy transition?

One has to hold two competing ideas at the same time, here in the midst of our difficult journey through energy transition.  First, the world is tipping back towards coal as oil supply peaks and the five billion people in the developing world reach for the fossil fuel still growing in supply: coal.  And yet, from an extremely low level, renewables like solar and wind are starting to grow at an astonishing annual rate. 

One has to be cognizant and sober about scale, here.  Yes, power supply from solar and wind globally are tiny compared to coal and natural gas generation, but it is no longer out of the question that the first threshold -- matching the power generated by nuclear -- will be achieved by wind and solar.

GS: And what about nuclear?  In the wake of Fukushima, what are its prospects?

GM:  Fukushima does not alter the course of nuclear so much as it merely perfects the trajectory already seen in the past few decades: the slow decline of the nuclear industry. 

Growth in nuclear the past few decades has slowed progressively, the industry no longer attracts young people, and most important of all: the complexity of the technology has only served to increase costs -- at prohibitive rate.  The result?  Private industry has little or no interest in building nuclear power.  The energy return on investment is low, and also in decline; the liabilities are too great and can only be covered by governments.

What we will see in this coming decade, therefore, is that the return on investment for both solar and wind -- both in capital and energy terms -- will not only accelerate but will also pull away from the comparative proposition in nuclear and possibly even natural gas or coal power generation.  The speed of construction, the lack of complexity especially in solar, and the much reduced community opposition both in the OECD and Non-OECD mean that new power generation from solar and wind will come on line quickly, blowing past the hurdles that plague fossil fuels. 

Again, this does not mean renewables will "replace" coal and natural gas.  Not this decade -- and not the next either.  But the growth rates will diverge in a massive way, and the career opportunities for young people will swing hard in this direction.

GS: You've long expressed the opinion (one that I share) that coal is going to be with us for a long time to come. What does that mean for the future of energy?  What do you think needs to be done to ameliorate some of the environmental damages caused by fossil fuels?

GM:  I hope to articulate the large trends, in both supply and demand terms, which dictate why coal will be humanity's primary energy source over the next 20+ years, in my pending essay on coal.  That said, starting in 2006 when I realized that a second coal age was likely, I was also struck by another, obvious realization: that coal would create problems requiring solutions.  At the ASPO meeting in Washington last year, I suggested that technologies which mitigated coal emissions and which also burned coal efficiently in-situ would see enormous growth -- and would be enormously profitable.  

If I recall, a number of these have started to sprout and while this will not assuage environmentalists (who are correct that "clean coal" is little more than a mirage) I do think that given the poor emissions level now seen in the developing world is a standard worth raising.  And, I do believe China and India will eventually reach hard for new emissions technology.

GS:  You recently wrote than "Energy, not financial capital, holds primacy for the economy’s future."  Are we heading into a new era of constrained supply? What does this mean for the US economy?

GM:  In my view, the reason that at least 15 if not 20 million Americans are either underemployed or simply unemployed is that the economic system can no longer access enough cheap energy to create profitable output.  Sadly, this is why labor has been shifting hard to the developing world, where very low wages offset high energy input costs, thus securing profits for corporations.  But all is not lost.  

Over the past few years I've studied the US capability in exports, and also the potential rebirth of local economies.  In short, the US, despite the problems, decent infrastructure and low electricity rates that can be utilized for niche manufacturing.  Port cities such as Philadelphia, Seattle, Boston, and Portland, OR, also offer easy direct routes to world markets.  

Indeed, I would encourage interested readers to look at economic data from the late 19th century and notice the thriving cities in America during that time.  While it's true that many of the "price" levels that the US enjoyed in the 1980-2005 period--whether in houses or wages--will not be seen again, it's also true that reorganizing the US economy to remove a lot of the discretionary waste will bring revival.

In other words, America is now on course to become "poorer" in materialistic terms and the terms we came to understand in the post-war era.  However, in terms of life quality, America may very well be on course to finally reach a better destination.  We are still very rich in natural resources in an otherwise resource constrained world.  And, we are still risk-taking innovators.  Once we drop the project of Empire, with its excessive military waste and reinvest in ourselves again, a lot of these nascent trends will start to unfold.

The Green Skeptic & Howard Lindzon Talk Cleantech Stocks on StockTwits.TV

Howard Lindzon and I talked First Solar and other alternative energy stocks on StockTwits.tv. (Note, this was recorded last Friday after $FSLR's earnings, but before this week's move, but it was broadcast tonight.)



Dig that Patagonia hoodie, Howard! But you look like I'm putting you to sleep...

(Disclosure: I hold a long position in several stocks mentioned herein, including FSLR, ENOX, TTEK,JCI, EXC, ORA, and AON). This post is for informational purposes only and is neither intended to be investment advice nor an offer, or the solicitation of any offer, to buy or sell any securities.)

Joshua Brown's 3 Biggest Investment Fads Of 2011

Joshua Brown, one of our StockTwits favorites aka @reformedbroker, was on CNBC last night and offered three investment fads for 2011, including social networking IPOs, muni defaults, and commodities like agriculture.

Of special interest to Green Skeptic readers, Josh suggests avoiding anything tied too closely to the Chinese infrastructure build-out and he doesn't think natural gas is quite ready, but suggests "keeping an eye on it" and "maybe even start to nibble," especially if oil goes over $100, which several sources are fully expecting in 2011.

Green Skeptic on StockTwits Talking LEDs and More

Leigh Drogen of StockTwits.tv and I chatted about LEDs, $CREE, and $VECO as the latter reported earnings today. And we hit on $ENOC and EVs as well. (Warning: I do a terrible impression of Count Floyd's Monster Horror Chiller Theatre from the old SCTV to open the show.)

Watch it here:



Or, if your browser doesn't support, you can check it out here at Stocktwits.tv

Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 09/10/10

Don't mess with the bear.

A short week and a short list for today's Green Skeptic LinkFest.

Fisrt up, Alex Taussig of Highland Capital Partners had an excellent post on his Infinite to Venture blog, which was picked up by GigaOm's Earth2Tech. A must read: "Dear Pundits: Energy Policy Needs an ROI."

Chris Dixon of hunch took some shots at VCs with his excellent post "Things I'd do if I ran a big VC firm."

It was China week here at The Green Skeptic, and first and foremost is David Sandalow of the Department of Energy blogging on Whitehouse.gov on U.S./ China cooperation energy research.

And I weighed in on the Cleantech Group's new report on "Cleantech Innovation in China."

Finally, if you missed Howard Lindzon's fun and informative series of interviews on "The Web is Dead" on StockTwits.tv, you need to go watch them NOW: The Web is Dead.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Green Skeptic Friday Linkfest - 08/27/10

First, some good news from our oceans for a change:

Oceanospirillales are into dining on oil, according to researchers in a new article in Science

Up to 40 New Plant and Animal Species Discovered in Indonesian Waters: Indonesian Bounty
 
and MIT researchers have developed a swimming, oil skimming robot that may be deployed in the Gulf: Seaswarm

But forests are still be hammered by our disposable culture:

China's 45 billion disposable chopsticks require 100 acres of forest every 24 hours (100 acres every day -- that's insane!): Chop Fooey
 
Back on this side of the globe, Philadelphia won the bid for an Energy Innovation Hub at the Philly Navy Yard, which will be led by Penn State: Energy Hub (My Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic was a supporting partner.)

And speaking of Philly, we're looking for a few good cleantech companies to present at IMPACT 2010 in Philly (in early November): Cleantech Applications
 
In what may prove to tarnish another US city's rep as a green leader, Boulder prepares to wash its hands of SmartGridCity, from Greentech Media: Not Such a SmartCity After All?

Meanwhile, Harvard B-School professor Rebecca Henderson has some advice on How to Speed Up Energy Innovation: Henderson on Innovation

And finally, StockTwits made Time's list of 50 Best Websites for 2010: Some Kind of Awesome.

Have a great weekend!

San Diego's Cleantech "Collaboratory"

San Diego has a lot going for it: beautiful weather all year round, a great coast, and...well, the new StockTwits HQ on Coronado.

And now, after several years of investment, hard work, and a smart Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders, who saw and seized the opportunity, San Diego has an emerging cleantech community.

"We're here to serve as a catalyst," says Holly Lepre, vice president of CleanTech San Diego, a non-profit formed a few years ago to promote San Diego as a world leader in the cleantech economy. "We're trying to stimulate the demand that drives and attracts new companies."

When I visited in May, CleanTech San Diego was about to announce that the region has reached 700 cleantech companies.  Earlier in the year the organization ranked number seven in the Cleantech Network's global "Top 10 Cleantech Cluster Organizations for 2010."

San Diego is also fast becoming a hub for next generation biofuels.

In June, the California Department of Labor granted $4 million to the region to develop a job training initiative for the emerging biofuels industry in both San Diego and the Imperial Valley

And earlier this month, the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, received a large part of a three-year, $9 million federal Department of Energy grant, and a consortium of seven companies, including San Diego-based Sapphire Energy, General Atomics, and Sempra Energy, are providing an additional $3 million to finance research and development.

Sapphire is developing what it calls "green crude," a 91-octane gasoline made from CO2, sunlight, and photosynthetic microorganisms. Last year, Sapphire attracted BP's former head of global refining, Cynthia Warner, to be its president. Warner saw the writing on the wall and decided "it was a lot better to create the key to the future than to nurse along the dying past."

Sapphire is not alone among next generation biofuels companies attracting dinosaur industry interest.   J. Craig Venter's La Jolla-based Synthetic Genomics recently launched a new greenhouse facility as a part of a multi-year partnership with Exxon Mobil Corporation.

But it's not just biofuels in sunny southern California. There are, according to Cleantech San Diego's Lepre, 176 solar companies in the region, including Spanish turnkey solar manufacturer Siliken, which has its US headquarters here, and Envision Solar, whose "solar trees" are starting to sprout up in around the country.

Envision is based in the Kearny Mesa district and housed in EcoHub, the area's first cleantech incubator. Yves Perez, founder of the Eco Investment Club, formed a partnership with Mark Mandell of property management company Square One Development, to start the incubator in a 12,000-square foot office plaza.

"We're in a secret race for the cleantech capital of the world," says Perez. "Win this secret race and we could double the number of San Diego-based cleantech companies and startups, and 700 becomes 1400 or more."

Bob Noble, president of Envision Solar explained why his company became one of the first in the EcoHub, "We wanted to be in a space where the building owners not only understood our mission but wanted to be part of it. Being surrounded by like minded-professionals opens up new avenues for collaboration and partnership."

That collaborative spirit is a key to San Diego's success, according to Lepre. "San Diego is a natural setting for a clean tech 'collaboratory.'"

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Green Skeptic on StockTwits TV with Howard Lindzon

I'm in San Diego and dropped by the StockTwits West studio to sit down with Howard Lindzon to talk about cleantech, oil and gas, and just have some fun:

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The Green Skeptic's Portfolio for 2010

I've made some adjustments to my Green Skeptic Stock Portfolio for this year.

All of these stocks are in the cleantech, energy, or environmental sector. (Note: I may hold other positions outside this sector and have an IRA that may have other positions as well, but this portfolio is strategically focused for specific investments in this sector.)

A couple of other things you should know about this list, in addition to the disclaimer below:

I rarely short any stocks.  Although I am tempted sometimes, I'm neither smart enough of a trader nor can I pay close enough attention to the market to do it well. So, the bulk of my portfolio is Long, but I'm also watching or tracking other stocks for either an entry, re-entry, or just because I'm curious about what's happening in a particular sector -- or they are a direct competitor of another stock I hold.

My interest in the companies whose stock I buy and hold is based upon a belief in the company, their product, their potential in the market, and whether I think they are or will be a market leader. (Don't let me fool you, I don't think I'm smart enough to predict whether they will be best in class either! But "ya gotta have one vice," as my Grandmother used to say.)

Anyway, here is my list of long positions and my watch list for 2010:

Long positions: $FSLR $CREE $TTEK $ORA $ENOC $JCI $EXC $AONE $XTO $AEP $AWK

Watch list: $BTU $CHK $KOL $CCC $GE $BWA $OTTR $TLM $NLC $TNB $APWR $COMV $WTR $AMAT

You will note that I am using the StockTwits convention for identifying ticker symbols, which includes a dollar sign. If you don't know about StockTwits, read my post here: StockTwits: Break Away from the Usual Market Noise or head on over to StockTwits.com and sign up for some of the best dialog and community on the web.


(Disclosure: I hold long positions in some of the stocks listed above. This post is for informational purposes only and is neither intended to be investment advice nor an offer, or the solicitation of any offer, to buy or sell any securities.)

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StockTwits Holds StockCamp at the NASDAQ Market Site

Meant to blog about this over the weekend, but got distracted.

I attended the first StockCamp hosted by StockTwits at the NASDAQ Market Site in New York City on Friday.

The event was broken into two sessions -- morning and afternoon -- of about 4 hours each. I was at the afternoon session, which was packed with lively dialog on a range of trading subjects, including tools of the trade with StockTwits regulars Brian Shannon (@alphatrends) and Joe Donohue (@upsidetrader), tape reading and price behavior with Steven Place (@stevenplace), Mike Bellafiore (@smbcaptial) and Quint Tatro (@tickerville).

Many of the StockTwits stable can be found on the stream and hosting web-tv shows about their specific trading concepts and ideas. Think of it as the anti-CNBC.

There was also a mind-opening or mind-bending conversation with MacroTwits host Gregor Macdonald (@gregormacdonald), along with Jim Goebetz (@aiki14), Jason Wood (@Wood83), and David Aferiat (@tradeideas). Their subject? The Changing Economic Landscape, which ranged from gold to Australian and New Zealand currency to the complacency of the American public. Heady stuff.

Keeping it all light and frothy was host Howard Lindzon (@howardlindzon), one of the founders of StockTwits, which has been built over the past year to include a desktop application, a web-tv network, subscription blogs, and now its own branded conferences.

With so much intellectual capital and social leverage, can an acquisition of StockTwits be that far off? Rumor has it Howard was meeting with Google Finance last Thursday, so who knows?

My three take-aways from StockCamp:

1.) Have a plan;
2.) Be disciplined;
3.) Next time Howard has an idea, and you're around at the beginning of it, make sure you have a piece of it.

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On Trading and Twitter, the Exchange of Ideas

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We are a people of trade. Trading is what we do. Trade was the main activity of our prehistoric ancestors -- at least those who weren't out hunting and gathering; they bartered or exchanged goods and services with one another before money was invented.

According to Peter Watson, author of Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud, the history of long-distance commerce dates from around 150,000 years ago.

It was on the Twitter "exchange of ideas" that got me thinking about this on Saturday. (I would have blogged about this on Sunday, but I was observing #twitterfreesunday, which I started to try to control my habit.)

My pal Howard Lindzon tweeted the following:

really just amazing how many people trade as a living or passion. starting to think our market is huge. 2:56 PM Feb 28th from TweetDeck

And I responded:

@howardlindzon Isn't trading what human beings do and have always done? From the old marketplaces to baseball cards as kids in the US 4:32 PM Feb 28th from TwitterBerry

To which Todd Stottlemyre, who trades from Arizona, weighed in:

@greenskeptic great point, wish I had all the Mickey Mantle cards my Dad use to bring home to me 4:34 PM Feb 28th from TweetDeck in reply to greenskeptic

Then Jaculynn Peterson of Portland, Oregon, added to the conversation:

@greenskeptic @howardlindzon Eugene OR survives on a trade economy. Why I think this city will fare better than others in coming years 4:34 PM Feb 28th from web

And so did the always enigmatic Deepak Das of New York, who said, "Currently I think my stamp collection from 20 years ago is worth more than my stock portfolio." (IU don't doubt him.)

What I love about Twitter is how quickly our idea exchange pays off. We toss out an idea and people trade off it and each other. That is our trade.

The willing exchange of ideas? Priceless.

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On Ideas, Status, Conversation, and Flow: Life and Twitter

Image via Wikipedia

Fred Wilson wrote on his blog, A VC, yesterday about how the status update has become the primary user experience, whether you're on Facebook or Twitter or another social networking option.

"I believe Facebook's recognition of status as the most important and most powerful social gesture seals the deal," wrote Fred. "Status is where it's at in social networking. This is very good for Twitter and it's also very good for the other social nets who recognize this and move quickly to provide status updating features and open them up to the social web."

Howard Lindzon, whose latest idea StockTwits, is built on the Twitter API and features a clever twist on the status update (Substitute "What Are You Trading?" for "What Are You Doing?"), countered that "It's about Ideas."

I agreed with both and said so in a tweet yesterday afternoon: I think it's about Status + Ideas + Conversation.


Jeffrey McLarty, who knows about such things from his study of global water issues, commented that it's all about flow. More specifically, "the flow of it all."

He's right too.

My wife, who is always right, really doesn't get Twitter or why I'm hooked on it. She asked me yesterday whether I preferred my "Twitter life" or my real life. Of course I said my real life, but later I started thinking about it.

There are plenty of moments during any given day when I do prefer my life online, connected to the folks in my various social networks over what I'm doing at that moment. And there are other times when I want to shut off that online world.

But then, it's becoming increasing apparent to me that there is no real difference between the two. And that is where the flow happens: I'll tweet something that feeds into StockTwits, it's picked up and retweeted by a total stranger, and then one of my good friends sees it on my Facebook status feed and comments on it or sends me an email about it.

Another friend calls me to set up a meeting in a couple of weeks and asks me about another tweet, which is in turn commented on by someone else. That comment might trigger another idea in my head, which I might share with my wife or someone with whom I'm having coffee or a beer, which sets off another flow.

A couple of weeks ago I tweeted something about my son collecting coins. One Twitter friend picked up on that and, because he is a coin collector himself, offered to send me some coins from the British Raj. Amazing flow.

The trick is to learn to "go with the flow" and not get swallowed up by it or run ashore. Now that the Dalai Lama (or at least his office) is following me on Twitter, I'm hoping the flow leads to some harmonic convergence or something. Or at least a continuous flow of ideas and status and conversation.

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Review: The Wallstrip Edge by Howard Lindzon

Investing books run the gamut from bad to Mad and from the solipsistic to the sophomoric. Most are wasting your time with hackneyed investing tips ("buy low; sell high") or the author's idea of the latest hot stocks. Such books seem designed to get you to watch the author's nightly TV show or to buy their next book.

In short, creating noise.

"Noise is the investor's worst enemy," Howard Lindzon says to open his book, The Wallstrip Edge: Using Trends to Make Money -- Find Them, Ride Them and Get Off. "It leads to fear, anxiety, and countless investing mistakes."

Lindzon tells his readers to turn off the TV, stop reading the financial headlines, and to ignore hot tips from friends, family, or your neighbor's dog. Rather, Lindzon, creator of Wallstrip.com the web-based video program that mashed pop culture and the stock market, offers an alternative approach.

It's a simple premise: stocks that have hit an all-time high and are showing signs of growth are likely to go up before they go down. For many, this is counter-intuitive: how can what appears to be an expensive stock be a good bet for an investment? Why don't I just buy a lower priced stock so I can buy more shares?

Lindzon suggests that jumping on a trend on the way up, riding it until it begins to show signs of slipping, and managing your price threshold can lead to greater success than traditional approaches to stock market investing.

He's a good writer, as readers of his popular blog are aware. And he has as much fun at his own expense as a stand-up comedian. But don't let the class clown image fool you, Lindzon is a smart investor and business man with a string of successes, Wallstrip and Golf.com among them.

His latest venture, StockTwits, builds on his own advice to connect to and leverage a network of people you trust to help you stay on top of trends, creating conversation rather than noise.

And staying on top of trends is important in today's rapidly changing investing landscape. The trouble with many investing books is that things are changing so fast that what is a high-flying stock when the author is writing may have tanked by the time of publication.

Certainly you can point to some of the stocks Howard Lindzon discusses in The Wallstrip Edge and say the same thing. Actually, even Wallstrip is no more; CBS, which bought the property from Lindzon in 2007, recently pulled the plug on the program.

But Lindzon suggests it's not about individual stocks, but the opportunity and, if you stay focused on the all-time high list, you'll always find an opportunity. The glass is half full and new trends always emerge. You simply need to pay attention.

Sound advice from a seasoned pro. And worth the price, which by the way costs about as much as a share of $CBS stock at its 52-week high.

(Disclosure: I am Long Howard Lindzon and StockTwits.)

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StockTwits: Break Away from the Usual Market Noise

Annoyed by what you hear on CNBC? I know I am. Seriously, I think their financial pundits have had as much if not more to do with the panic in the market than short sellers. And the other business news coverage is just as bad.

As Jim Cramer says, "They know NOTHING!"

But what if you could eavesdrop on and converse with other traders, amateur analysts, and market enthusiasts? What if you could have a dialogue about stocks you're interested in or actively trading? What if you could bring your own knowledge and interest to the conversation about investing, be it alternative energy and clean tech or whatever.

Well, now you can. Try StockTwits. It just launched with a simple design that will be familiar to users of Twitter or other social networking platforms. Here's a screen shot of my feed stream:




Developed by Soren Macbeth and Howard Lindzon, StockTwits was built on the Twitter API as a way to aggregate Twitter conversations about stocks, trading, and financial markets. A number of us have been using it for months now (and you can too) simply by adding a dollar sign before a stock ticker (such as $FSLR).

A simple idea and a pretty cool concept. The folks at betaworks, which focuses on seed stage Internet media, must think so, too, as they added StockTwits to their portfolio with an investment last month.

I'm interested in using StockTwits to engage with like-minded (and contrarian) clean tech and green energy investors, contribute to the knowledge base about some top performers, as well as learn more about companies I've missed or overlooked.

Come join the conversation.

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Wallstrip Turns Two

Wallstrip celebrates its 2nd Anniversary today. One of our favorite, actually, the only "web tv" offering we watch regularly, Wallstrip looks at stocks, companies, and trends, especially those that are trading at or near an all-time high. Wallstrip is, as its website describes, "where pop culture meets stock culture."

Founded by Howard Lindzon, Adam Eland, and Jeff Marks, Wallstrip was hosted by the fabulous Lindsay Campbell (now the host of MobLogic.tv) and currently by the equally fabulous Julia Alexandria, who took over in January of this year.

Howard conceived of the idea in the Summer of 2006. He "wanted to create a show like Jon Stewart about stocks. Positive and simple." Eight months after launching Wallstrip, Howard sold it to CBS for $5 million.

Over the past two years Wallstrip has featured alternative energy and green stocks (see search list here), such as WFR, CLHB, and ORA.

Here are two episodes (one from each of Wallstrip's delicious hosts) on wind and solar energy:


Watch CBS Videos Online



Congratulations to the Wallstrippers, and here's to another fabulous season of Wallstrip!

Howard's latest play is StockTwits, which he is developing with Soren Macbeth. StockTwits is an open, community-centred investment idea and information service. Think of it as a "Bloomberg for the little guy."

Soren built it off the Twitter API as a way to track real-time conversations between people interested in stocks, trading, and sharing. Check it out: StockTwits

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On Panic and an Opportunity in the Midst of Crisis

"Can't you understand what's happening here?" George Bailey says in "It's a Wonderful Life," as the crowd gathers in the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan to make a run on their accounts.

"Don't you see what's happening? Potter isn't selling. Potter's buying! And why? Because we're panicky and he's not. That's why. He's pickin' up some bargains. Now, we can get through this thing all right. We've, we've got to stick together, though. We've got to have faith in each other."

The scene ends with the financial wizards of the BBB&L toasting the last two dollars they have before closing time. Hope springs eternal, even in the worst of times.

I kept thinking of that scene during the past few weeks and, while there are comparisons to that earlier era, the "Debtpression" is different from the Depression. And while the seemingly socialist tools of nationalizing banks and credit institutions seems like a "New Deal," I don't think it is the answer and may end up being a raw deal.

We need to rethink the whole premise of our economy and of what growth looks like, and what our country is built upon. For far too long, our economy has been built on unsustainable growth, and greed.

When housing starts are the bell-weather of growth and consumption fuels the GDP, what do we expect? What do you do when new housing slows down? Make loans more available to those who can't really afford the mortgage you're selling. And extend their credit so they can buy more things to fill up those houses. How long could that have gone on?

We need to rethink the foundational elements of our growth. Why can't growth be equivalent to healthy communities, to greater efficiency, and improved and better uses of existing infrastructure? Why can't our economy be built on sustainable innovations?

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and author of the popular blog, A VC, wrote today about the effects of the economic downturn on his portfolio companies. And (pardon me Fred if I've misinterpreted) it seems that he actually finds opportunity for these companies in the challenging times we're facing.

He writes, "Much has been written about how the 'nuclear winter' of 2001-2003 led to many of the innovations we've been tapping into since. Clearly the capital efficiency revolution was fanned in the nuclear winter. When capital is scarce, smart people figure out how to do more with less. So first and foremost, let's all take advantage of this capital efficiency to get our costs down and build businesses with even more operating leverage. And hopefully there are new tricks out there that we can use to get even more capital efficient."

Gregor Macdonald, an oil analyst and energy sector investor, who also focuses on the coming transition to alternatives, seems to share this view of a leaner, more efficient financial engine.

"What’s needed now is a flowering of smaller investment banks and private equity, to fund the next wave," he writes on his blog Gregor.us. "The financial landscape should become 6 inches high, and 3000 miles wide. We are going to have to cut in the opposite direction, from the current consolidation in US banking. And it will take time. But I think what the country needs is to see a lively investment community in all major cities. Not just New York and Silicon Valley."

Greater capital efficiency and more dispersed investment community. Lean business models and more operating leverage. Sounds more sustainable.

I can't help thinking that out of this crisis -- if we can avoid the noise and abject panic -- can come a new path; a second chance, really. A path that is fundamentally about triple-bottom value creation, where profits are good, but so is people and the planet.

And I keep thinking, as I know Gregor does, that the three areas crying out for investment and that could provide a foundation for a new economy are energy, infrastructure, and new financial service models. Really, a new green economy.

"We invested in the wrong things," Gregor writes. "We invested in the wrong infrastructure. We invested in things that are now paying us little, in the way of return. I’m certain a new era dawns for energy and finance. The investment failures of this decade have likely made the ground fertile, to make it happen."

So, I'm trying to pay attention to a different kind of noise right now -- although it has been tough. It's a bunch of conversations, dialogues, monologues, and even rants by people a lot smarter than me in this arena. It's happening in a community that has a gathered on services like Twitter and StockTwits and Disqus. And it's a more hopeful noise. Concerned, yes, but already beginning to think about what happens post-panic.

As Andy Swan put it in his blog tonight, starting to move from despair to opportunity:

Despair : Opportunity

Fully Invested : Cash Heavy
Short Term : Long Term
Employee : Entrepreneur
Noise : Vision

STOP leveraging your bottom-calls.
STOP thinking in terms of next week or next month.
STOP just being an employee.
STOP listening to the noise.

START raising money.
START thinking about 2012
START thinking (and working) like you own the place

START FOCUSING.

To which, I can only reply (and did), "Amen, brother."

We can get through this thing all right, as George Bailey told the investors of BBB&L. We've, we've got to stick together, though, have faith in each other, and stay focused on a vision and a plan for 2012.

What Are You Doing? Wallstrip Does Twitter

Okay, this is outside my usual subject matter, but I've been a fan of Twitter ever since Fred Wilson sold me on the microblogging service over a year ago. (You can follow me at greenskeptic)

I know a lot of people who don't get Twitter, including some who are near and dear to me. Most think it's an unnecessary distraction; some actually think it's evil.

I used to think the former, but then I became addicted. After many months of using it, I realized the best answer to Twitter's simple question, "What Are You Doing?" is NOT, "Having a sandwich" or "Drinking my 3rd cup of coffee."

It's also a good idea not to answer, "Having a bad day at the office." You never know who is watching...unless they follow you. Like any communication tool it needs to be used judiciously and thoughtfully. (I've learned that lesson the hard way.)

What Twitter does best is allow you

1.) to stay in touch with people you don't get to see or speak to often -- or meet new people with whom you would otherwise not be connected;

2.) to post quick takes on subjects you are interested in but don't have time to write a blog post about, and

3.) to wrestle with business problems, the answers to which may already be out there in the Twitterverse.

I've even used it to ask my followers -- now over 350 people -- to help name my book or my green energy investing start-up. (More on THAT later...)

Recently, a number of us are using Twitter to muse about the rise and fall (mostly fall) of our stock portfolios and to gauge what others are thinking about companies we are interested in.

StockTwits scans your tweets (as long as they contain a stock ticker preceded by $, such as $FSLR) and automatically indexes and displays them with a chart of the ticker.

Now, two of my favorite addictions, er distractions, Twitter and WallStrip have come together, trying to answer the question, "What ARE you doing?"



Shout-outs to Howard Lindzon and Soren Macbeth, who got me into StockTwits early -- another great distraction, er tool.