Bookkeeping: Taking Some Solar Exposure off the Table

It is always tricky trading solar stocks on technicals, because much like the dry bulk shippers they don't seem to trade on technicals much, but simply on macro viewpoints and sentiment. Many times you will sell a solar stock at a traditional resistance point and the whole sector gets into favor and stocks rally 30% in the following 2 weeks. Or vice versa. Perhaps this is why my style of investing falters in the solar sector.

With that said, both Yingli Green Energy (YGE) and Trina Solar (TSL) have been beaten with the ugly stick of late, but have enjoyed a couple of days of rebound. In many ways these charts are identical - both stocks fell below both the 50 and 200 day moving averages, and now have rebounded to approach the first resistance level of the 50 day moving average - approximately $20 for Yingli and $41 for Trina. So I am going to cut back both here, and re-assess - obviously if crude continues to levitate sentiment for the group will turn more positive (even though solar is more of a direct competitor with coal or natural gas).

Simply for technical reasons, and nothing else I am cutting these stakes - Yingli Green Energy down to 0.8% of fund and Trina Solar down to 2.4% of fund. As always, if the stocks power through these resistance levels, we'll change course and have to pay up for the positions we just sold off. But these appear to be dead cat bounces to me, and the aggressive investor would in fact short these type of charts as oversold stocks bounce into a resistance area like this...

Long both names in fund; long Trina Solar in personal account