Which Fuel Cell companies? February 12, 2007
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Investing,Little Green Portfolio , trackbackRight. My pension contribution is sitting in the stockbroker account, and I really need to decide what to do. Looking through the list I found a couple of weeks ago, I quickly realise that there are not many to choose from.
Voller Energy considers the military as one of its major markets, so they are hardly going to fit in with the ethical criteria I use.
Proton Power Systems may or may not be interesting, but without even having an investor relations section on their website, its impossible to tell.
Polyfuel also see the military as a major market.
Oxford Catalysts has just been shortlisted for the ministry of Defense’s Portable Power Systems research project. This is getting difficult.
This leaves three, all of which are worth a little more effort. Ceramic Fuel Cells, Ceres Power and CMR Fuel Cells are targeting rather different areas of the fuel cell market, and all are at least a year from having any sales revenue, so will be fairly speculative. It may be that buying smaller holdings in these three (and perhaps Acta, which is no more speculative than the others) is a better bet. A little more research is needed, so more blog entries to come.
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Comments»
I think that most IFAs would advice you to invest less than 10% of your pension in alternative energy companies and less than 5% in fuel cell companies. It doesn’t have anything to do with being green, simply that these green stiocks are, at the moment, high growth but also volatile and high risk. Is your portfolio diversified with other defensive stocks such as bus companies and water utilities? Rather than picking stocks, have you considered buying some Merrill Lynch New Energy MNE.L investment trust instead?
The Little Green Portfolio is only a part of my pension, and even then its only partly in energy related stocks. I’m pretty cynical about the advice of IFAs, but certainly diversification is essential, and across different asset classes as well.
I rather enjoy picking my own stocks, and so far haven’t done too badly (or too well, I admit) but thanks for mentioning the Merrill Lynch one – will have a look at that.