While the sector still has its detractors, there is no getting around the fact that 2013 has been quite kind to solar stocks and the ETFs that house them.
Buoyed by an array of factors ranging from China doing everything in its power to prop its ailing solar companies, to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) acquiring a stake in a solar project to
takeover rumors, solar stocks have soared.
Heading into Tuesday's trading session, the Guggenheim Solar ETF (NYSE:
TAN) was up 21.1 percent year-to-date while the rival Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (NYSE:
KWT) was up nearly 21 percent. Tack another approximately four percent onto each as KWT and TAN are soaring today on news that Argentina is planning to ramp up its use of solar power.
The South American nation is planning to increase solar capacity as much as 35-fold as part of a government plan to get 8 percent of the country's power from renewable sources by 2016,
according to Bloombergsecond sovereign debt default this century.
Moreover, this is the same Argentina run by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner who has shown a penchant for nationalizing companies and an overt hostility toward foreign firms doing business in her country. Those are among the reasons the Global X FTSE Argentina 20 ETF (NYSE:
ARGT) plunged last year and why the country is at
risk of losing its frontier market status.
To be certain, Argentina could use increased solar investments to spur its flailing economy. Economic activity there expanded just 1.9 percent last year compared with an
8.9 percent increase in 2011according to Transparency Internationalhere.
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