Dear Jill, Bill, Kate and Tim,
Thank you so very much for your contributions to the Analysis of Solar Energy Companies, the first TechniTrader® case study. We have so appreciated your dedication, insight, thought provoking research and comments, and sense of humor. This team embodies the spirit intended for the case study. Sincerely, Adrienne

HI,
I found the Study group challenging
Although our group chose ENER
I've had a soft spot for TSL
partly because TSL kind of sounds like Tesla
I know, "Don't fall in love with a stock", well, just a little.
Trina Solar's "Me Solar" product is what Sold me plus it's positive inspirational, uplifting photo profile of the group from their website. They all seem very young and happy
Kind of like a cute cheerful baby with a good product.
Today ENER took a 23% nose dive. I suppose it should go up again, 'cause they're not all that bad.
Thank you Martha and Adrienne for all your feed back and encouragement.
Kate

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THREE RIVERS STUDY HALL - WEEK 5 REVIEW

Kate, Bill, Tim, and Jill,

I am very impressed with each of you. Your group did a superb job for every assignment and really opened up the thought process rather than just taking a stock at face value. Now you can begin to see the process that the best fund managers go through as they study companies for long term holds in new technologies.
I hope you enjoyed the case study program and learned more than you expected to learn.

You should see now that caution must be taken when selecting any solar company as a true leader has yet to emerge.

Do be cautious about placing too much emphasis on patents. Often companies with loads of patents find suddenly that some new little firm has leapt over their patents with totally new technology.

The race is on for Solar Energy but it is not a sprint. It is a Marathon and we are in the earliest stages of that Marathon run.

Great work, thank you for participating. You contributed a lot of information.

Martha
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One should have a crystal ball before one ventures forth into the unknown. After I had signed up but before we started the VP of Operations of my company announced his retirement (with no replacement) and the second week after we started the senior VP either quit or was let go; a week ago today I found out in a meeting that the department I head will no longer exist (but I appear to have a job anyway), so my time has been extremely limited - pretty much to lobbing a note over the transome. I have followed along, but what research I accomplished seemed to already have been discovered by Kate or Jill.

An additional note: While I have pretty much been an auditor rather than a team member, I think the exercise has shown several things. One would be the outline with which to sort through companies in search of the long term successful players. Martha's questions bring focus to the process and allow a means of filtering through a mass of information.

Another would be that answers may not be crystal clear after the dust has settled, the ink dried, and they may not be clear for some time to come. It might be 6 months, a year or more before there is enough evidence to entice one to invest, unless one has the luxury of excess captial and one wishes to take the risk level of venture capitalists, who as I recall look for 1 out of 10 as a very good track record. When that one hits, it is usually a hit completely out of the ball park, but a good deal of cash is burned up before one gets there. The alternative would seem to be to sit and watch, with the understanding that one is not going to get in on the ground floor, or maybe even the 10th floor. However, we are not talking about something that has a short lifespan of growth.

Another lesson is that this is the kind of research that either needs to be done as a team, or one has to have a goodly amount of time to spend; in other words, the work is most likely not to be done in 5 weeks alone. This has been a worthwhile exercise, and it will be interesting to see in the future where ENER goes.
Tim

Our job as case study participants these past 5 weeks has been to dig into our company and its stock. So, I dug into things I may not have otherwise. If I had been looking for watch list companies on my own, I might have taken a look at ENER in February when the stock was working on a nice platform. Sticking to the criteria, once I saw 138% institutional holdings on nasdaq.com, I would have quickly moved to the next stock-to-study on my list.

Martha gave me a fact-check on how many shares of ENER Ionic is actually holding, confirming it is different than what nasdaq.com currently shows. I appreciate the specific piece of information. My posts were indeed focused on trying to figure out what was really happening there. Indirectly, I was also trying to ask broader questions. I am seeking clarification on the research process in general, and feedback on how best to use limited research time. Was this meaningful information to try to track down, or was I stuck in minutiae?

When studying a company, we are looking for reasons not to buy the stock. This particular case may turn out to be an anomaly of time delayed data adjustments. Or the data could be incorrect. All data providers make mistakes on occasion. And hedge-funds & corporate raiders have been known to take a majority position in a company, which often results in unpleasantness for minority shareholders. Do investors benefit from knowing what is going on behind the numbers? Especially when something appears out-of-whack? Or is it better to make a pragmatic choice to stay within specified boundaries on some criteria, and use our research time in other areas?

When is it a useful choice to explore questionable or anomalous data that would, if taken at face value, eliminate a stock from further study? Does the type of research I was attempting offer a potential edge to a trader or investor? On occasion, I suspect it could. But time is a limited commodity, and I want to use mine wisely. How do I decide what might be important to follow up on, and/or when I have followed the evidence far enough or long enough? There is always another potential pick to look at.

The essential part of this institutional share discussion, for me, turns out not to be about Ionic or ENER. I've been dancing around this conundrum in my head all week. I am trying to understand how to differentiate (and/or decide?) between the essential research for long-term investments vs. pragmatic decisions to NOT investigate further when it appears one or more of the 12 prerequisites is not met.
Jill

Note from Adrienne: This was an email sent to me by Jill and I post it with her permission. I believe she has clearly laid out valid questions and important information especially for beginners. Thank you Jill, for all your fine work! Best wishes, Adrienne