Green Stocks for Staying in the Black
09/20/07 - 03:59 PM EDT
Farnoosh Torabi
After seeing a screening of An Inconvenient Truth last fall, 31-year-old Karyn Ravin regretted ever leasing her gas-guzzling Nissan Pathfinder. She should have bought a Toyota Prius, she realized.
But with one more year left on her SUV's lease, Ravin opted for the next best green thing -- 100 shares of Toyota (TM Quote - Cramer on TM - Stock Picks), an auto company known for its dedication to fuel efficiency. "It was doing our little part," says Ravin, owner of Maletzky Media, a public relations and marketing firm in New York City. So far, the stock's been friendly to her broad-based retirement portfolio, climbing roughly 15% since she bought it last September. Indeed, green is the new black on Wall Street, with individuals increasingly placing bets on eco-friendly stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. "People understand you don't have to sacrifice returns to invest in an environmentally responsible way," says Jack Robinson, lead portfolio manager of the Winslow Green Growth Fund (WGGFX Quote - Cramer on WGGFX - Stock Picks). While some financial experts preach that the greener the investment, the better, there are potential downsides. "It's a speculative sector as a whole," says John Quealy, analyst at financial services firm Canaccord Adams. For one, this sector is vulnerable to the demand for traditional energy. "If we saw oil go back down to $50 [a barrel], all of a sudden there's not going to be as much demand for green stocks," says Tom Lydon, editor of ETFTrends.com, a blog about ETFs. What's more, investors should watch out for bursting bubbles within certain subindustries, such as solar, whose capital investments, experts caution, run the risk of outpacing demand. "It looks to me like too much manufacturing capacity is coming on too quickly," says Jim LoGerfo, founder of Vortex Energy LLC, a financial advisory firm.
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