Category Archives: Connecting the Dots

Energy Portfolios, 23 Months: Sustainable Energy DOUBLED, Fossil Fuels DOWN (slightly)

PLPort.2014.11.21On Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; Eight in the Sustainable Energy space and eight in the fossil fuel space. At the close of trading, Nov. 21, 2014, that would be worth $24.3 Million and all of the increase is in the sustainable energy portfolio.

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 36.05 % from 12/21/12 to 11/21/14.
  • The S&P 500 is up 44.34% from 12/21/12.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio has DROPPED 0.02%.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio is up 105.99% from Dec. 21, 2012 but down from August, 2014.

Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios: 22 Months: Sustainable Energy Up But Dropping

PLPort.2014.10.21

On Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; Eight in the Sustainable Energy space and eight in the fossil fuel space. Between December 21, 2012 and October 21, 2014

By 10/15/14, GT Advanced Tech had filed for bankruptcy protection, and other stocks in the portfolio dropped to points near their Dec. 2012. The portfolio as a whole dropped 55% from Sept. 19, 2014. Stay tuned, and keep your seat belt on. Continue reading →

Ft. Calhoun Plant – Reopened After 2 Years, 8 Months and Over $970 Million

Fort Calhoun plant, seen from above.

Ft Calhoun Plant – Arial View

The Fort Calhoun nuclear plant reopened in December, 2013. The plant, on the west bank of the Missouri River about 20 miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, closed for refueling in April, 2011, and was flooded in June, 2011. Refueling a nuclear plant typically takes about 6 – 12 weeks. Due to the flooding, the Fort Calhoun plant was closed for 970 days, from April, 2011 until December, 2013. (NY Times / Associated Press, here). Back in June, 2011, the cost estimate by David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists, was roughly $970 Million in lost revenue, plus the costs of repairs. Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios – Simple Analysis re the Fossil Fuel Portfolio

The Deepwater Horizon Spill

The Deepwater Horizon Spill

“You can’t have oil without oil spills.” – Markwayne Mullin, R, Oklahoma. (Official / GovTrack)

Wind and Sun Won’t Spill

In a period when the Dow Industrials rose 30%, the S&P 500 rose 40%, and the Popular Logistics “Sustainable Energy Portfolio” rose 223%, the “Fossil Fuel Portfolio” rose 21%.

This suggests that a paradigm shift is underway in the energy industry.

Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios: 20 Months: Conclusions & Observations

PL_Port_1408Conclusions:

  1. The performance of most of the companies in these portfolios supports the hypothesis that a paradigm shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy systems is underway.
  2. Investing in an index fund may have been more lucrative – and less stressful – than investing in the Fossil Fuel portfolio.
  3. Investing in paradigm shifting technology, i.e., First Solar, Sunpower, GT Advanced Technology and Vestas may be very lucrative.
  4. A diversified portfolio in paradigm shifting technology may also be effective. The “home runs” will more than make up for the “strike-outs.”
  5. Investing in a well-run, or well-connected, company, i.e., Haliburton, in a declining industry may also be lucrative.

Observations:

  1. The long term trend appears to be that investments in Sustainable Energy are likely to pay off in the long term and also, probably, the short term.
  2. Investments in Fossil Fuels, however do not appear likely to appreciate in the near future, even in a “Bull Market,” such as we appear to be in.  However, a speculator, i.e., a gambler, may be able to play various fossil fuel stocks, buying at lows and selling at highs. While I am not an investment professional, I personally, don’t know if this is worth the risk. I prefer to do my gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey and Las Vegas, Nevada.
  3. When considered against the backdrop of global geopolitics, i.e., Russia, which exports oil and methane, invading Ukraine, ISIS in Iraq and Syria threatening to take over Iraqi oil operations, other turmoil in the Middle East, a paradigm shift away from fossil fuels seems likely to insulate energy flows from remote geopolitical events and strengthen economies that have executed this paradigm shift. Therefore, investments supporting such a paradigm shift may do well, while investments supporting the existing paradigm may not.

Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios, 20 Months: Sustainable Energy up 229%, Fossil Fuel up 18.4%

PL_Port_1408On Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; $8.0 iMil in the Sustainable Energy space and $8.0 iMil in the fossil fuel space.

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 30.16 % from 12/21/12.

  • The S&P 500 is up 39.3% from 12/21/12.

  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio continues to dramatically underperform the reference indices. It is up 18.36% from Dec. 21, 2012 and down 5.67% from July, 2014.

  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio is up 229.19% from Dec. 21, 2012.

Continue reading →

Colony Collapse Disorder

Californians have been growing almonds for a long time. "The Almond Grove At T. H. Selby's Residence, Fair Oaks, Cal." ca. 1870. NY Public Library

Californians have grown almonds for a long time. “Almond Grove At T. H. Selby’s Residence, Fair Oaks, Cal.” ca. 1870. NY Public Library

2006 was something of a banner year for both beekeepers and growers. A high fraction of beekeepers experienced better than 50% losses. Many growers could not rent bees at any price. Lots of almond groves in California went without pollination that year, and, as with many species of nuts, if the pollen isn’t carried over from an unrelated plant, nuts do not develop. Almonds, like many crops, (and most nuts) do not self-pollinate. Unless pollinated by an agent like a honey bee, they just don’t bear fruit. The price of almonds shot up in 2006 and has not dropped very much since.

Continue reading →

The case of the Disappearing Bee

Now you see her; now you don't

Now you see her; now you don’t.

There aren’t enough bees to perform all of the pollination work in the United States. So, if you like to travel, make money doing it, and don’t mind a sting now and again, then professional beekeeping may just be for you.  And hey – it’s a seller’s market.

About 1.4 million hives get hauled to and around California every spring. They travel by plane, semi or pickup trucks. 60% of the American hives are engaged in commercial pollination. They pollinate almond trees, and other key crops:

  • Cranberries in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
  • Blueberries and peaches from Jersey to Georgia,
  • Pumpkins from Jersey to Illinois.
  • If it comes from a flowering plant, it’s pollinated by bees.

You can take your bees “On The Road” and make money without writing a word. And if you actually hate to travel, you can just send the bees.

Just make sure they all don’t all disappear.

Continue reading →

Behind Oz’s Curtain

Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson

Behind Oz’s Curtain of ‘Law and Order’

By C.C. Reilly

Bill Thompson: Schools not Prisons

“The [$34 million] the city wants to spend on [the Brooklyn House of Detention design] contract would be better used as a means to reduce class sizes and build more schools.”
NYC Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr.
November 19, 2009

Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios: 19 Months: Sustainable up 222%, Fossil Fuel up 25%

PLPortfolio.1407aOn Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; Eight in the Sustainable Energy space and eight in the fossil fuel space. Here are the results since Dec. 21, 2012:

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 30.26%.
  • The S&P 500 is up 38.04%.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio is continues to dramatically underperform the reference indices. It is up 25.08% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio is down 11% from last month, but is up 221.77% from Dec. 21, 2012.

The details are below.

Continue reading →

Roller Coasters, Solar Power, Wind Power or Terrorist Tunnels

Qatari Emir w Ismail Haniya, Oct. 2012

Qatari Emir Hamad al-Thani with Ismail Haniya, Oct. 2012, Photo NY Times.

In October, 2012, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, as reported in the NY Times, here, “pledged $400 million to build two housing complexes, rehabilitate three main roads and create a prosthetic center, among other projects” in Gaza.

The $400 Million could have built 133 MW of offshore wind or 100 MW of PV Solar electricity generation capacity.

Continue reading →

Universal Databases, Marilyn Monroe & Scarlett Johansson

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson

Relational Databases, RDBMSs, circa 1999, such as DB2, MS SQL Server, Oracle, Informix and Sybase, implementations of E. F. Codd‘s work at IBM and built according to Codd’s 12 Rules, are effective for solving OnLine Transaction Processing, or OLTP problems. These might be termed “Blue Quadrant” problems, if you consider Stonebraker’s Matrix, 1, below.

X-Ray of broken arm, courtesy of C. Bethel, MD, and A. Dean, MD.

Broken arm, courtesy C. Bethel, MD, and A. Dean, MD.

They are billing systems, trading systems – accounting systems.  Relational databases are useful for tracking widgets and money, as long as those widgets can be described with words or numbers.  Processing simple data, even with a high volume of transactions.

Relational databases could also be used to store images, such as those of Scarlett Johansson or Marilyn Monroe, above, or X-Rays, left. However, these are stored in the database as Binary Large Objects, aka “BLOBs.” While RDBMSs could operate on large volumes of data in various ways, there are just two operations they could do on on BLOBs: store and retrieve.  They could not query on intrinsic properties of a BLOB. They could query on data that describe a BLOB, but not the BLOB itself. There is no other processing in a traditional RDBMS. And they could not search on images, only on text describing images.

Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios, 18 Months, Analysis

EnergyPortfolios_Indices_2014_06 We are watching a paradigm shift.

How else can we explain the dramatic rise of the Sustainable Energy portfolio, the equally dramatic underperformance of the Fossil Fuel portfolio, compared to the Dow Industrials and the S&P 500 since I started this experiment on Dec. 21, 2012? The data are in my post of June 24, 2014, Energy Portfolios, 18 Months: Sustainable up 257%, Fossil Fuels up 24.6%.

Consider these questions:

  1. Which companies are Disruptive or Subject to Disruption?
  2. Which companies are Evolving and which are doing what worked for the last 20/30/50/80 years?
  3. Can management execute?
  4. Is management asking for government subsidies?
  5. What about the long term side effects? What are the Economic Externalities?

Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios: 18 Months: Sustainable up 257.06%: Fossil Fuel up 24.56%

PL_EnergyPort_14_06On Dec. 21, 2012, I put $16 Million imaginary dollars in equal imaginary investments in 16 real energy companies; Eight in the Sustainable Energy space and eight in the fossil fuel space. In the 18 months between the close of trading December 21, 2012 and the close of trading June 20, 2014,

  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 29.46% from 12/21/12.
  • The S&P 500 is up 37.27%.
  • The Fossil Fuel Portfolio is up 24.56% from Dec. 21, 2012.
  • The Sustainable Energy portfolio is up 257.06% from Dec. 21, 2012.

In addition to the data summary, below, this post, the 21st in the series, will be followed with a summary analysis.

Continue reading →

Energy Portfolios: 17 Months: Sustainable up 211.6%: Fossil Fuel up 18.52%

EnergyPortfolios_1405aThe Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 26.29% from 12/21/12.
The S&P 500 is up 32.03%.
The Fossil Fuel Portfolio is up 18.52% from Dec. 21, 2012.
The Sustainable Energy Portfolio is up 211.6% from Dec. 21, 2012. Continue reading →