When Solar Leaders Fall More Than Oil Giants… On Oil (FSLR, STP, SPWRA, TAN, XOM, SLB, OIH)

John Ogg is usually pretty sharp but the solar/oil link is spurious. Not only is correlation not causation but sometimes it's not even correlation. As the Rock Man said to Oblio "You see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear. "From 24/7 Wall Street:

Solar stocks are again trading no different than a leveraged bet on oil prices. This is something we have noted on many occasions and with oil down by another -$2.59 at $64.14 per barrel in NYMEX WTI, that is looking to be the case again. An analyst call on First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) is not helping, and these two outside issues are bringing down Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. ( STP) and SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ: SPWRA).

Even the Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy (NYSE: TAN) is getting hit. Where this gets interesting is that oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) on the integrated side is down only 1.6% and Schlumberger Limited (NYSE: SLB) on the services side is down less than 3% at $51.00.

Including June 1, 2009, First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) would have closed down on 16 days if you include today. The NASDAQ 100 measured by the looks to be down only 12 days in the same period. Shares are down over 4% at $147.51 in late morning trading. The stock is now down more than 25% from the late-May highs when shares were hitting $200 again. Barclays took its target down to $175 today. Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP) is down over 7% at $17.01 in fairly active trading. SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ: SPWRA) is down close to 7% at $24.47.>>>MORE