Alternative Energy Investor Discussions

[Norse]

I must admit I'm puzzled why solar is down across the board, sometimes heavily like JKS. I've gotten into the habit of scanning for news at night on each of them and it seemed decent, nothing to indicate something like JKS would be taking a heavier hit than the market in general.

Its because of Asia, some big banks have got issues with bad loans, so people are scared this might make the goverment become more strict on loans. This will not have any effect on Solar, atleast not the US listed at all.

 

[justdoit]

Glad you agree to hold tight on CSIQ. I've decided that is what I'm going to do! As far as super OTM, what sleepy is trying to say here is that if it's 1% or less of your portfolio you may as well take the moonshot. The way I see it, JASO (and the other solars) are likely to keep on shooting up, doubling and tripling in value or more over the next year or so, OR we will see what happened last ER season (or worse) happen again the next few quarters. There were nice runups before the last ER season giving very nice gains only for them to mostly all go away. I had bought some slightly in the money front month options on CSIQ and SPWR. The SPWR ones expired worthless but I got lucky selling my CSIQ ones early so my gains on those canceled out my losses on the SPWR ones. So I can go way OTM and have a chance for thousands of percent profit or lose it all, or I can go slightly out of the money and have chance for hundreds of percent gain or lose it all. When running the mental math it seems the farthest out gives best risk reward when thinking of it that way. My gut was against this until I thought about it this way.

There of course is the chance that the stock just mildly appreciates thus making the near the money or slightly OTM the best play. Or, if you do what you're doing by creating bull call spreads that takes out a lot of the "lose it all" factor but also takes a lot of the gain a ton factor, thus making it a lot less binary. Taking that approach is probably the best strategy to ensure some sort of nice gains with only a moderately higher risk than owning stock. For % allocations greater than 1% I think what you're doing is a great strategy and I should probably do that too for more of my cash but for now I'm going to let stock be the main portion of my solar portfolio as I don't have enough time to keep up with this many solar companies and TSLA.

I'm glad we can have these types of discussions, it really helps me out!

This makes a lot of sense, thanks for clarifying @Jonathan. What was also keeping me out of the JASO deep OTM calls was that there is little volume and they're expensive so it is hard to get a "good" deal. Dec OTM calls ask didn't really move at all today even with the stock moving a couple percent. Decided to go ahead and bite the bullet a buy a little (which sucks b/c they're in the red as soon as you buy b/c the bid/ask spread is pretty large). Got some Dec and Jan OTM calls with a little money I'm willing to lose. Not sure if I'll slowly accumulate more or if I'll just sit tight.

What did you end up doing?

 

[hershey101]

I have some ATM Jan '14 and Jun '14 calls for CSIQ and JASO respectively.. I really don't like investing in JASO though, a 90M mkt cap is wayyy too small and the stock can have really wild swings making buying options the same as just throwing away money.

 

[EnergyMax]

..I really don't like investing in JASO though, a 90M mkt cap is wayyy too small...

This is something that confuses me. Google lists a 90M market cap, while yahoo lists 426M. Which is it?
Google https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:JASO
Yahoo http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=JASO

 

[borat99]

CSUN's IV is super high. Are they set to announce earnings tomorrow or something? I can't seem to find an official confirmation on that.

 

[fjm9898]

according to Yahoo, yes.
I dont have CSUN, but anyone else on top of them? Would be nice for Solar earnings season to start off with a positive.

 

[Norse]

This is something that confuses me. Google lists a 90M market cap, while yahoo lists 426M. Which is it?
Google https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:JASO
Yahoo http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=JASO

426 is correct. If it was 90 I would have sold my car to buy options on it

 

[Mario Kadastik]

426 is correct. If it was 90 I would have sold my car to buy options on it

I'm guessing you're not driving the Model S yet then

 

[Jonathan Hewitt]

This makes a lot of sense, thanks for clarifying @Jonathan. What was also keeping me out of the JASO deep OTM calls was that there is little volume and they're expensive so it is hard to get a "good" deal. Dec OTM calls ask didn't really move at all today even with the stock moving a couple percent. Decided to go ahead and bite the bullet a buy a little (which sucks b/c they're in the red as soon as you buy b/c the bid/ask spread is pretty large). Got some Dec and Jan OTM calls with a little money I'm willing to lose. Not sure if I'll slowly accumulate more or if I'll just sit tight.

What did you end up doing?

I got mostly the March 17s but also some June 18s. I way overpaid. I was busy at work this morning so wasn't going to be at the computer at market open so I put in a buy order premarket. I saw that it was up a bit premarket so I put in a pretty high limit because I didn't want to "miss out." When I went to check the market later I saw that JASO did not go up but in fact went way down. Sucks, but long term if the binary event occurs in my favor it won't matter what price I paid for them. I thought about buying more to average down but I think I am already at my max for "super high risk" options. I should've done what I did but with half of what I wanted, that way if I was wrong I could've bought the other half at much cheaper. That "mistake" combined with TSLA being awesome I didn't have a fun day. I'm actually surprised I don't care too much, everything should rebound at some point, if not tomorrow.

At least CSIQ was a saving grace today. My CSIQ stock+LEAPS+April $36s shined like a bright star in a world of darkness. Thank you CSIQ.

 

[Clemsons2k]

I got mostly the March 17s but also some June 18s. I way overpaid. I was busy at work this morning so wasn't going to be at the computer at market open so I put in a buy order premarket. I saw that it was up a bit premarket so I put in a pretty high limit because I didn't want to "miss out." When I went to check the market later I saw that JASO did not go up but in fact went way down. Sucks, but long term if the binary event occurs in my favor it won't matter what price I paid for them. I thought about buying more to average down but I think I am already at my max for "super high risk" options. I should've done what I did but with half of what I wanted, that way if I was wrong I could've bought the other half at much cheaper. That "mistake" combined with TSLA being awesome I didn't have a fun day. I'm actually surprised I don't care too much, everything should rebound at some point, if not tomorrow.

At least CSIQ was a saving grace today. My CSIQ stock+LEAPS+April $36s shined like a bright star in a world of darkness. Thank you CSIQ.

Sounds exactly like my day haha.

 

[borat99]

I was busy at work this morning so wasn't going to be at the computer at market open so I put in a buy order premarket.

@Jonathan, never ever do market orders. :smile: If I know I'm going to be busy, I always just do limit orders with previous day's bid price just to be safe. By the way, how much did you end up paying? I got a few of the same contracts for 0.60 and 0.65 I think.

 

[Jonathan Hewitt]

@Jonathan, never ever do market orders. :smile: If I know I'm going to be busy, I always just do limit orders with previous day's bid price just to be safe. By the way, how much did you end up paying? I got a few of the same contracts for 0.60 and 0.65 I think.

It was a limit order but I put in a higher amount than I should have. I got what I put the order in for, .80 for the march ones and 1.10 for the Junes.

 

[hershey101]

It was a limit order but I put in a higher amount than I should have. I got what I put the order in for, .80 for the march ones and 1.10 for the Junes.

I also got into the game with some June '14 $13 @ 1.8...
Also have CISQ Jan '14 $25 @ $2.50 (I wish I had bought some more of those, the 50% profit looks much better than the 60%+ losses I have in TSLA options right now... had bought Nov '13 $190s @$15)

 

[Zaxxon]

One of my 'test the water' options bought earlier this month was that same CISQ Jan '14 $25 @ $1.72. Looking good so far at around a 100% gain. My plan was/is to hold through (or at least until) November earnings. Any thoughts from you more experienced folk on this? I know that I should expect the decay to accelerate in the last 60 days or so which is what led me to the current plan, but I'd be very interested to hear thoughts from others.

 

[brianman]

@Jonathan, never ever do market orders. :smile:

I've heard this advice before, but I've lost out on a few trades because I set limit orders @ the current price and the market moved just enough that they didn't execute. Also, some of the sites complain if you set limit orders below/within the market price.

 

[justdoit]

I got mostly the March 17s but also some June 18s. I way overpaid. I was busy at work this morning so wasn't going to be at the computer at market open so I put in a buy order premarket. I saw that it was up a bit premarket so I put in a pretty high limit because I didn't want to "miss out." When I went to check the market later I saw that JASO did not go up but in fact went way down. Sucks, but long term if the binary event occurs in my favor it won't matter what price I paid for them. I thought about buying more to average down but I think I am already at my max for "super high risk" options. I should've done what I did but with half of what I wanted, that way if I was wrong I could've bought the other half at much cheaper. That "mistake" combined with TSLA being awesome I didn't have a fun day. I'm actually surprised I don't care too much, everything should rebound at some point, if not tomorrow.

At least CSIQ was a saving grace today. My CSIQ stock+LEAPS+April $36s shined like a bright star in a world of darkness. Thank you CSIQ.

Haha. Yea, not a great day here either. I also grabbed some of those March 17's. Talking about overpaying, decided to put a little in Dec 18's just to see what happens Definitely overpaid for those but we'll see what happens. Will be keeping a close eye on JASO.

 

[IwannaMS]

I am relatively new to these forums (been lurking for a little while) and also relatively new to investing in solar (aside from a little trading on SCTY). I have been following the recent discussions on several of the companies like JASO, CSIQ, SOL. Before dipping my toe in a bit more with some stocks and calls, how much are these companies affected by the performance of some of the other bigger solar companies?

For instance, I have heard FSLR is a bell weather company for solar and they have their ER on Oct 31st. More than just making moves based on their individual ERs, what are the other stocks we should be watching? If FSLR doesn't have a strong report, and if they take a hit, is that likely going to smack down a few of these others I mentioned? Thanks.

 

[ggr]

I've heard this advice before, but I've lost out on a few trades because I set limit orders @ the current price and the market moved just enough that they didn't execute. Also, some of the sites complain if you set limit orders below/within the market price.

It's all about volume, and relative volume. If the stock is thinly traded (and almost all options count as thinly traded) a market order can be a total disaster. Even a highly traded stock can be moved by a moderately big order. But at volumes of about 10m/day (where TSLA is at) buying/selling up to about 10,000 shares probably won't move it enough to worry about, and a market order is probably OK.

 

[justdoit]

Wow, 60% of float is short in JASO
Should You Worry About the Short Interest in JA Solar Holdings Co., Ltd. (JASO)? - Yahoo Finance

And guess what the 3 longs are from Marketwatch. CSIQ, SPWR, and JKS. Impressive price targets for each
3 longs and 3 shorts to watch - MarketWatch

 

[sleepyhead]

Wow, 60% of float is short in JASO
Should You Worry About the Short Interest in JA Solar Holdings Co., Ltd. (JASO)? - Yahoo Finance

And guess what the 3 longs are from Marketwatch. CSIQ, SPWR, and JKS. Impressive price targets for each
3 longs and 3 shorts to watch - MarketWatch

I really recommend that you guys do your own research instead of relying on articles. The short float is nowhere near 60% in JASO. In fact is about 6% and not 60%.