there are bullish stories about solar on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, stocks in the best companies will be 5 to 10 times higher than today.
Well, the problem I see is that so many conglomerates have been expressing an interest in being one of those "best companies". I am talking about Sharp, Toshiba, Samsung, TSMC, just to name a couple of them. Also countries like Japan, China and India have all expressed the goal of having their country be either "the" leader or one of the leaders in solar technology, and these are countries that "pick winners," that is, they put money into favored companies in favored sectors to support their national policies.
All of this will complicate the problem of picking those "best companies." Indeed, it may be impossible to do, and the companies will always just be trading vehicles. At least, that is my current hypothesis about solar. I am not sure that there will ever be a company that will be worth holding for many years, even though it is clear that eventually the market itself will be enormous. |
