O/T Alternative fuel investments

Re: O/T Alternative fuel investments

Jack Guzman from Maine

>I don't know much about it but my nephew,who's at Worcester Polytechic is doing experiments in biodiesel using vegetable oil.I've heard this stuff mentioned in other circles as well.---Jack

Scrub plane

jim reed @ tallahassee

>instead of a motorized planer. I think a MIB Stanley #40 and a MIB Stanley #40 1/2 are pretty good investments.

Used to have a friend with a bumper sticker

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>on his bicycle that read, "Burns only cholesterol."

Sorry I can't help, Todd. If'n I knew, I'd be investing myself.

Re: Used to have a friend with a bumper sticker

thomd

>I know quite a few folks in the energy investing business and I would not presume to have any chance getting in on the ground floor these guys have been doing it since university for 30 years.

Anywho. Here is an interesting site for at least defining some of the issues relative to what is or isn't new actual economically viable energy:

http://www.tinaja.com/h2gas01.asp

Re: O/T Alternative fuel investments

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>My understanding of investing is limited, but since you asked ... ;) I always thought if you did not have much money to invest, you are better off putting it all in a mutual fund. The mutual fund has investments spread over a broader base, so the chance of losing big is very slim. If you had a lot of money to invest, you could put a large portion in a mutual fund and then play around with some of it for a higher risk/higher potential yield. There is no doubt that there will be some big winners in alternative fuels, but if anyone could predict who is going to win that knowledge would be worth billions of dollars, and would not be given away free of charge :) I would assume that the big energy companies now are investigating alternative fuels, and most of them would probably be a good investment. There are a lot of choices in various mutual funds, if you find the right broker you can choose to some degree what your money will be invested in.

Sound advice there Moses.

vlparisian - Houston

>

Agree with Moses

Wiley Horne

>The problem with picking individual stocks is that you have to know them in depth, deep into their accounting practices and order book, and you have to stay on top of them. You wake up one morning and your stock that's been doing great is cut half in two over some accounting practice that stock analysts just discovered.

Wiley

Re: O/T Alternative fuel investments

Clay C in Miami

>And, even if you could guarantee that the alternative fuels industry as a whole would thrive beyond belief, that might not help you much. If your crystal ball in 1980 had told you that personal computers and the Internet would dominate commerce as they do today, you would have been likely to invest heavily - in Commodore, Osborne, Amiga, etc. -- all gone now. Ditto with foreseeing the future of the auto industry in the early 1900s, and your portfolio of REO, Nash, Auburn, Pierce-Arrow, etc.

It's a matter of predicting which precise companies will thrive, not just which sector. But, he could consider a 'sector fund' if he wanted to focus on that sector - that is, a mutual fund which allocates its investments more widely, but still wholly within a relatively narrow sector.

Clay

Thanks Clay--message forwarded

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native, Presently Away

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