Karen's musings on Energy Conversions and Ford

This may be counter-intuitive, but it is totally consistent with our buy-low/sell-high goals and our continued belief that solar energy is a coming thing.

I think we should sell Ford, and - wait for it - buy Energy Conversions. Here's why.

As of today, we've almost doubled our money in Ford; we bought at $7 something and it's now at $14 something. Edward Jones just downgraded Ford from a buy to a hold, based on its belief that Ford has done well so far but will struggle to keep the same pace on improvement in the coming months (for a bunch of pretty obvious reasons).

Energy Conversions is another story. We paid $18-ish per share and it's now just over $2 per share.

Here is a Feb. 16 article saying how they compare unfavorably to others in their sector: http://seekingalpha.com/article/253328-energy-conversion-devices-moves-sideways?source=qp_article

And here is a press release from ENER just days ago, making matters worse: http://stocks.usatoday.com/custom/usatoday-com/html-story.asp?guid={d48e9fbe-8aa7-4878-b799-90cd115aa5fa}

So, the general consensus is they may be down for the count - or at least a long count. BUT - we've already lost almost all of our money (our cost basis of $1,952 is now worth $267).

If we buy another 100 shares of ENER, we reduce our cost basis from $18 to $10 per share, and it only costs us $248 plus $25 fee. If it goes up, we can break even at a lower price; if it stays down or drops, we can take it as loss later in the year to offset (for tax purposes) gains on any sell-high-ing we do this year.

An alternative might be to bail on ENER right now and buy one of the more highly thought of companies doing solar. First Solar is one I've heard mentioned. It is selling for $139 per share with a 52 week low of $100 and high of $175. One writer on ENER said FSLR is more insulated from the bad regulatory news in Italy and can shift product back to the U.S. FSLR does advanced thin film semiconductor technology, similar to ENER.

Or we could look at an entirely different green energy stock. But that's as far as I'm going down this rabbit hole at the moment.