Friday, August 15, 2008

Solar Stocks Levitating, Led by SunPower (ENER; FSLR; JASO; LDK; SPWR; STP)

UPDATE: I forgot to add this link, from two days ago, "Solar Waking Up: Solar Stocks Comparison Table August 13"

Yesterday, with the market looking iffy, Trina opened down and then started a slow but what looked like inexorable levitation. I thought to myself "That's exactly what Teledyne did at the start of the Big Bull!"

Then I thought "I'm old!".

A word of explanation; in August of '82 Teledyne was an option trader's go to. As a three figure stock, a given percentage move would take you through more strike prices than most any other issue. Remember, there weren't a lot of stocks in triple-digits, the S&P 500 was changing hands at 7 1/2 times earnings. Realizing this, spec money was attracted to the action which the folks in Chicago were more than happy to oblige.

The market bottomed at 776.92 on Thursday the 12th. On Friday TDY seemed to levitate on no news and the option writers started yanking their offers. The same thing happened on Monday. I didn't realize it (most folks didn't, c'est la vie) but the Big Bull had begun.

I'm not that old. I was precocious. Repetez.

SPWR is trading up 17.2%.
STP, up 7.7%.
TSL, up 5.7%
LDK, up 4.3%
ENER, up 3.6%
JASO, up 3.5%
FSLR, up 2.5%.

UPDATE, Yahoo appears to have substituted a week old chart. I'll fix it Saturday.
Here's the five day chart on Trina, via Yahoo:

Chart for Trina Solar Ltd. (TSL)