If you’re a green energy activist, you might love the idea of solar energy. You might have chosen to back your political idea with your investment capital. But if you’d bought First Solar (FSLR) – an industry leader – at the stock market bottom in 2009, you wouldn’t be sitting on massive profits today. Instead, you’d have lost more than half of your initial investment. And it goes both ways. If your political interests aligned with fossil fuels, you might have invested in the coal industry. That again, would have been a bad investment decision based on politics. The entire coal sector is down around 70% since 2011. The simple truth is that you don’t want to make individual investment decisions based on your political beliefs. It clouds your judgment and makes it hard to see mistakes.
By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
American Consequences 23
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