Finance Blog

A Brand New Look and Feel for Google Finance!

2009-07-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

Over the last few months, we experimented with some changes on the site. We tried a couple of new layouts and received lots of feedback and suggestions from users and Googlers alike. Now, we're excited to launch a newly redesigned Google Finance!

Our goal, first and foremost, was to make our current market data, news, and portfolios easily accessible from anywhere on the site. To that end, the most obvious change is the addition of a left-hand navigation bar that lets you move between the major sections of the site in one click.

Links to sub-sections, like Portfolio-related news or individual portfolios, let you dive even deeper.

We're also launching a number of new features to Google Finance that we hope give you more access to data and provide added flexibility.

You can now plot your favorite technical indicators (Simple Moving Averages, Bollinger Bands, etc.) on the Google Finance charts by clicking the Technicals link under the chart. Plus you can view OHLC and Candlestick charts too. Click Settings under any chart to get started. (We're really happy about this launch, specifically; technical indicators were one of our most highly requested features.)

Streaming real-time Recent Quotes are now displayed on the left-hand navigation bar and are hence accessible from any page on the site.

Comparing related companies is now easy with our new interactive tool. From any company's summary page (for example, CSCO's), click Add or Remove Columns in the Related Companies section, and add the financial metrics you want to track.

You can customize the homepage. If you see a small drop-down arrow on the right side of a section's title bar, that section can be moved around the page. Click the arrow, and you can choose to move that section up, move it down, move it all the way to the top of the page, or minimize it.

So take a tour around the site -- click around the left-nav, play with the technical indicators; move some sections around the page -- and let us know what you think. If you have feedback or questions, visit the Help Center.

Cheers,
Ayan

Shhh...testing in progress

2009-03-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

Over the course of the next few weeks, you might notice a few changes to Google Finance. We will be running some experiments on the look and feel of our site, based on an accumulation of user research and feedback. They will only be visible to a small number of random Google Finance users. (In case you're wondering, experiments are selected randomly, so we can't give you any advice for how to get in!)

It's pretty normal for us to run this kind of test, as we're always working to improve the experience of using Google Finance . In fact, experiments like these are a cornerstone of Google's development process - here's a post on the Official Google Blog explaining this practice for our search results.

Finance for Android application launched

2009-03-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

Posted by Arun Mathew, lead engineer, and Nick Fey, user experience designer

A year ago here at Google, an engineer (Arun Mathew) and a user experience designer (Nick Fey) set out to build a Finance mobile application for Android that would both showcase the possibilities of this new mobile OS and be a lightning fast way for users to access their Google Finance portfolios. The original goal was to address the frustration of having to set up all the stocks you want to track when using a new mobile portfolio; we're excited to have delivered on this goal for our users. You will notice that the first time you open the Android app, your portfolio is automatically downloaded in the background and it continually syncs with the Google Finance when running, so any changes on the phone will be seen on the website.

As the application took shape we added additional features with the aim of allowing users to get stock quotes, market data and news as fast as possible. Highlights include real-time streaming quotes in your portfolio, rapid stock look-ups with search auto-suggestion, and 'recent quotes' to speed up receiving quotes on-the-go; for each stock there are detailed quotes, charts and news available. At the moment, this financial data is restricted to US exchanges only.

Throughout development we attracted additional engineers and designers, all volunteering their 20% time. A special thanks goes out to David Fuchs, David Ko, and Bob Rose for all the time and effort spent building the application, as well as to the many other engineers and designers that helped make this a product worth launching.

Finance for Android is available now on the Android marketplace or you can install it with this barcode if you have the barcode scanner application.

Screenshots:

Markets view

Portfolios view

Company page

Stock quote lookup displaying autosuggest

Ads on Google Finance

2008-11-17T15:38:00.001-08:00

Posted by R.J. Pittman, Director, Product Management

We've introduced something new to Google Finance. You will notice we are now displaying small, targeted advertisements on some pages of Google Finance. The ads are visible on the homepage next to the market summary, and on company summary pages below the first few news stories. We have worked carefully to integrate the advertising to enhance the user experience. Our goal is to always show you relevant ads that you will find useful. Google Finance is now positioned to bring users a choice of relevant financial information and services through contextual advertising. And as with all of our products and search properties, we'll be continually working to increase the quality of the ads and the overall usefulness of the site.

If you want more information about the ads on Google Finance, visit the Help Center. From there, you can also send feedback using our suggestion form. Additionally, you can read more about our new advertising initiatives in the latest post on our company blog.

Plot Feeds is back

2008-08-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

And ... we're back. You can once again view blogs and plot feeds on Google Finance charts. Access to blogs provides a greater range of information than conventional news alone; plotting a particular feed lets you view its information in the context of a stock's performance.

Click the 'Blogs' tab from any company's summary page, and you'll see the blogosphere's coverage of that company plotted along the chart. Or, if you want to plot specific blogs on the chart -- blogs you know, blogs you search for, or blogs you write -- click the 'Feeds' tab. Search for a blog or type its URL, and the blog posts will be plotted on the company's chart, making it easy for you to discover the blogs that provide high-quality analysis and breaking news.

Try this feature out and let us know what you think. Stay tuned for more as we continue to enhance Google Finance.

Plot Feeds unavailable for the moment

2008-08-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

As you may have noticed, the Google Finance site was inaccessible to some users for several hours earlier this morning. We’ve now restored the site, but it will take us a bit longer to restore the blogs and feeds feature that we launched yesterday.

We’re working feverishly on a fix and will let you know as soon as these features are back up.

If you're experiencing any technical difficulties, we encourage you to visit the Google Finance Help Center.

Plotting more than news on the charts

2008-08-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

Posted by Vivi Costache, 20% Charting Wizard

Plotting news stories on the company charts has always been one of my favorite features of Google Finance. Today, I'm happy to announce that we're pushing it even further!

First,you'll notice that we moved the Blogs section to a tab next to the News area. When you select the blog tab, relevant blog posts are listed and charted just like the news items, making it easier to see the blogosphere's coverage of your favorite stocks.

We've also added a tab called Feeds. There are a few ways you can use this tab:

Search for relevant feeds by typing keywords in the query box. Relevant results (like blogs or news feeds) are listed so you can choose which one to plot onto the chart, just like news stories and blog posts.
Use addresses from blogs you know, blogs you've written, or blogs you just found that you think are relevant to a stock. For example, one of my favorite URLs is http://AAPL.bloggingstocks.com/rss.xml. Enter it in the query box and you can see the news about Apple from bloggingstocks.com as flags on a company chart (hint: it works for most other symbols too!).

Use data from Google Spreadsheets. If you keep notes in a Google Spreadsheet about your investing decisions, you can publish that spreadsheet to the web and plot the entries along any Google Finance chart.

And best of all, if you find a blog or create a useful spreadsheet that you'd like to share with others, you can click "Link to chart" to send a link to your friends.

For more advanced tricks for the Feeds tab, you can visit our Help Center to learn more.

We're hoping this feature will encourage more, and more meaningful content creation by analysts, bloggers, and users alike. By giving users more content to compare with the stock performance over time we hope to help investors make financial decisions that are as informed as possible.

As always, let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Google Finance invests in Google Data

2008-06-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Posted by Casey Ho and Steven Soneff, Software Engineering Interns

Our team is pleased to announce the release of a data API for Google Finance portfolios. This means that developers can build financial software that could give you easy access to your portfolios on your desktop, homepage, or mobile phone. If you know something about writing software and are interested in making this happen, check out the details on the Google Data API blog and let us know what you come up with!

It's raining real-time quotes!

2008-06-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome; Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

Today, we're pleased to extend the availability of real-time quotes on Google Finance, Google.com and other Google search properties to include companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). We've partnered with the NYSE on a pilot project that enables us to offer users free access to more real-time stock quotes. Now you can follow companies listed on both NASDAQ and NYSE in a streaming real-time fashion every second of every day -- well, at least while the market is open.

As you know, we worked with the NYSE and SEC last year to make this data more accessible to our users and we're happy to finally see it come to fruition. Our goal is to provide our users with the tools and content that help them manage their portfolios, stay informed about breaking market changes, and easily access the financial information they're looking for. Providing up-to-the-second market data from two of the largest exchanges in the US helps us achieve that goal.

As always, if you encounter problems or have suggestions, please let us know.

Custom date range on the charts

2008-06-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Posted by Andre Lebedev, Software Engineer

We are happy to have launched custom date entry on our charts. Try clicking the mouse over the date range in the top right corner and enter the exact date range for which you want the chart to be set.

Want to see the chart for all of 2007? Enter '2007' as start date, and '2008' as your end date, and the chart will reset to display the stock price for all trading dates of 2007.Want to see the chart for February of 2008? Enter '2008-02' for start date and '2008-03' for end date.

If you encounter problems or have suggestions, please let us know.

Put cash in your portfolio!

2008-06-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

Posted by Patrick Coskren, Portfolio Software Engineer

Portfolio cash support is one of the most requested features by our users. We listened: you can now add a cash balance to every portfolio you maintain. In the 'Add' section that appears on every portfolio page, you'll see a new 'Cash' tab where you can apply deposits and withdrawals to your cash holdings. Furthermore, your stock transactions -- both existing and new -- can be individually linked to your cash balance, so that a purchase or sale results in a matching debit or credit. All you have to do is click the new 'Cash-linked' checkbox on the 'Edit transactions' tab. No longer will your total portfolio value appear to drop just because you decide to realize your gains on a stock by selling.

Don't want to track cash? Don't worry. If you never enter a cash deposit or link a transaction to your cash balance, you'll never see a cash value in your portfolio.

This is just the beginning, so stay tuned. We've got plenty of ideas to improve our portfolio feature, and we're sure you do too! Please continue to share your ideas with us in the comments below, and if you find any problems, please let us know.

Bombay Stock Exchange pricing data

2008-06-12T16:42:00.000-07:00

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We've just added support to Google Finance for Bombay Stock Exchange listings. In addition to news and descriptive data (which we already offer for these listings), you'll now see intra-day data and pretty charts. You can search for companies by name using the search box. You can also search by ticker -- for example, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Reliance Power, you can search for it by name, as RPOL.BO, or as BOM:532939. Similarly, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Zee Entertainment, you can search for it by name, as ZEE.BO, or as BOM:505537. The SENSEX can be found as .BSESN or ^BSESN. As always, if you find any problems, please let us know.

NASDAQ quotes go real-time on Google Finance!

2008-06-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of real-time last sale prices for NASDAQ listed stocks on Google Finance and other Google search properties. Google has partnered with NASDAQ for this pilot program in order to offer users free access to real-time stock quotes.

It's important to have up-to-date market data. It's equally important that that data stay up to date. Consequently, we're enabling the streaming of quotes across Google Finance. Prices will update automatically, once per second, to reflect current market conditions.

As many of you are aware, we have worked on this for a long time. We believe providing real-time stock quotes is an important step to allow investors to make more timely and better informed investment decisions. From Wall Street to Main Street, everyone deserves equal access to the financial markets.

Hong Kong Stock Exchange pricing data

2008-05-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We've just added support to Google Finance for Hong Kong Stock Exchange listings. In addition to news and descriptive data (which we already offer for these listings), you'll now see intra-day data and pretty charts. You can search for companies by name using the search box. You can also search by ticker -- for example, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Hutchison Whampoa, you can search for it by name, as 0013.HK, or as HKG:0013.

Note: While we've added support for Hong Kong equities, we haven't yet added support for the Hang Seng indices. We're working on adding Hang Seng support, and will announce it here as soon as it's available.

Thanks for using Google Finance! As always, if you find any problems, please let us know.

A new home page and a new country!

2008-04-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ayan Mandal, Product Manager

You might have noticed today that our homepage has a new look. We've been listening to your feedback, and as a result have made it easier to follow the latest news affecting the market as well as those that are relevant to your portfolio. You can still view your portfolio's performance and recent quotes on the homepage. We hope the new look helps you find the financial information you're looking for much more quickly and easily!

The new homepage look is available on all Google Finance properties (U.S., Canada and the U.K.). And there's a new site addition too: Google Finance China. The Chinese stock market has been generating a lot of buzz, and there has been a pronounced increase in individual investing all across China. We are happy to offer Chinese investors access to Chinese stock and mutual fund information as well as to other global markets through our easy-to-use and familiar interface in Chinese. This is an exciting launch for us, and several engineers from our New York and Shanghai offices have worked hard to make this happen. This simultaneous launch of the new homepage with the Chinese site continues our momentum in adding new features and countries in the future. As always, we encourage you to send us your feedback, and stay tuned for more feature updates to come.

Taiwan Stock Exchange pricing data

2008-04-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We've just added support to Google Finance for Taiwan Stock Exchange listings. In addition to news and descriptive data (which we already offer for these listings), you'll now see intra-day data and pretty charts. You can search for companies by name using the search box. You can also search by ticker -- for example, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in MediaTek, you can search for it by name, as 2454.TW, or as TPE:2454. Similarly, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Cathay Financial, you can search for it by name, as 2882.TW, or as TPE:2882. The TAIEX can be found as .TWII or ^TWII.

As always, if you find any problems, please let us know.

Introducing the Stock Screener

2008-04-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Posted by Daniel Switkin, Software Engineer

I'm very happy to announce that today we are introducing a new stock screener to Google Finance. If you haven't used one before, a screener is an advanced search tool that lets you find companies which match a set of criteria. For example, you could search for large companies with a PE ratio less than 20 which pay at least a 5% dividend. Or you could screen for small tech companies with strong 5 year growth. It's entirely up to your investment strategy.

There are a number of new and cool features I'd like to mention. Anytime you make adjustments like setting a value, removing a criteria, or limiting the search to a single exchange, the list of results updates automatically. The search is completely live -- no buttons to press. We also have blue and white histograms so you can see the distribution of all companies for a particular value--for example there are far more companies with a market cap below one billion dollars than above. You can either grab the sliders or type exact values to the set the minimum and maximum for each criteria.

Once you have run a screen that you like, you can bookmark the page or email the link to a friend. Since not all of the criteria may be familiar terms, we've included definitions in the Add Criteria wizard, as well as a help icon next to each line.

As always, please let us know how you like it. We're hard at work on new features and want to incorporate your suggestions. Happy screening!

iGoogle chart gadget fixes

2008-03-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

Posted by Vivi Costache, Software Engineer

A while ago we launched an iGoogle Finance tab with various gadgets. We received a ton of feedback from you, and one of the main questions was "why are there no fancy finance charts there"? It was a bit of a challenge to add those nice charts using iGoogle, so it took more time than we hoped. And now... the Google Finance Chart gadget is ready for you!

Add the Google Finance Chart gadget »

We've even added a configuration option for setting the default number of days on your gadget so that it best fits your trading habits.

So go ahead and watch your favorite stock (or combination of stocks by entering multiple tickers) on iGoogle and let us know if you have any other suggestions for our fancy charts gadget. We're listening.

Tell us what you think

2008-02-25T09:57:00.000-08:00

Posted by Marianne Berkovich, user experience researcher

We’re looking to get some organized feedback from y’all about Google Finance. Please take a few minutes to take our survey and tell us about how you use it -- which features you like, which you don’t use, and a bit about what kind of investor you are.

This survey will help us learn what’s working for you and focus our energies on the areas that matter most to you. We look forward to hearing from you!

Take our survey!

Google Finance heads across the pond

2008-01-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

Posted by Nick Fey, Google Finance designer

Being a British bloke I am particularly pleased to announce the launch of Google Finance in the UK (http://finance.google.co.uk). Now it's easier for us Brits to get our own European public and private company information as well as UK mutual fund data. In addition you can find GBP currency quotes on the home page, so we can feel smug about how much cheaper everything will be when we visit the U.S. The local UK business news will give you the latest information about the European markets and we will be improving the relevance of stories and speed of news delivery even more over the coming months.

This UK launch is the second in a series of local versions of the Google Finance site, following Google Finance Canada, which launched last summer. We have received many requests to bring this service to other countries around the world, and will be working to do that this year. Kudos to the small crew of engineers on the Finance site who have managed to do this as well as build some great new features that we will be rolling out in 2008.

Please feel free to leave comments on this blog or send us email through the Help Center requesting new features. While we can't respond to them all individually, don't feel that they are being ignored; your feedback has a huge impact on how we prioritize our work.

To all my china plates back in the UK -- enjoy.

Finance + Gadgets = Fun

2008-01-23T17:14:00.001-08:00

by Geoff Pike, Google Finance 20% Engineer

Inspired by the entertaining and informative Google Finance tab for iGoogle, I created a charting gadget that displays bigger charts with a light dose of technical analysis. I can't claim great knowledge of (or success with) said analysis, but I like to look at moving averages and occasionally other indicators computed from recent price and volume action.

The details: weekly price and volume data come from Google Finance; prices are plotted on a log scale, with 10- and 40-week moving averages; and a "hot/cold" indicator is presented at the bottom of the chart. A security is deemed "hot" if its price was up three straight weeks with increasing volume each week. (Alternately, a security is marked "cold" if it was down for the same interval.) Prices are plotted in blue, with green for the 10-week, and yellow for the 40-week moving averages. This gadget works only on iGoogle.

My gadget is not an official Google gadget -- it's more like a fun experiment. Comments are welcome! Or, if you'd like to write your own charting gadget, take a look at my source code and the Google Chart API documentation.

Borsa Italiana pricing data

2007-11-09T16:23:00.000-08:00

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We're happy to let you know we're now able to offer pricing data for Borsa Italiana listings. In addition to news and descriptive data (which we already offer for these listings), you'll now see intra-day market data and charts. You can search for companies by name using the search box, or you can search by ticker. For example, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Alitalia, you can search for it by name, by RIC as AZPIa.MI, or as BIT:AZA.

As always, if you notice any problems, please let us know. It may take us longer than we'd like to resolve issues, but we do read every report.

API, Gadgets, and Tabs, oh my!

2007-10-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

Posted by Gundy, Google Finance engineer

Today, we're excited to release a Google Finance tab on iGoogle. This tab is a dashboard of financial gadgets which enables you to add, customize and share your Google Finance experience. But here's what's extra cool about these gadgets -- they now have communication skills and can "talk" or "sync" with each other.

As part of this release, we're introducing a bunch of new gadgets, including:

- Top Movers
- SnapQuote
- Related companies
- Company overview
- MiniChart
- Company Sector

Ready to see this tab in action?

But wait, there's more! If you're a developer, we just made it easier for you to make a stock market gadget with our new API. The gadget API for market data provides a framework so developers can display stock market information from the American, Nasdaq and New York stock exchanges within a gadget on Google properties. Unfortunately, due to data licensing restrictions, we couldn't open this API for display on any platform. However, we believe this is a great start in providing easier access to stock market information and hope you have fun with it.

For more specific information, please refer to the following:

- gadget API for market data specs
- Inter gadget-communication documentation
- Discuss with other gadget developers

As always, please let us know what you think in the comments below!

Australian and New Zealand pricing data

2007-10-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

Posted Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We're pleased to announce the availability of pricing data for Australian (ASX) and New Zealand (NZX) listings on Google Finance. We've always had descriptive data and news for these listings -- now we have all that plus intra-day market data and pretty charts. You can search for companies by name using the search box. Alternatively, you can search by ticker. For example, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in the Auckland International Airport, you can search for it by name, as AIA.NZ, or as NZE:AIA. Similarly, if you'd like to find the current price for stock in Billabong, you can search for it by name, as BBG.AX,or as ASX:BBG.

As always, if you notice any problems, please let us know. It may take us longer than we'd like to resolve reported problems, but we do read every report.

Green with envy

2007-10-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Posted by Russell Leidich, Google Finance 20% Engineer

You may have heard the idiom "green with envy". It refers to a strong feeling of desire to experience the same good fortune experienced by someone else.
I must admit: that's exactly how I feel with respect to what I call the "Green Stock Boom". And what better time to examine green energy investments, than today, Blog Action Day?

It's starting to feel a lot like 1999 in this industry, and it would pay to have some insight into who might be the next Amazon.com (AMZN), rather than a glitzy second-tier competitor who ultimately fails to grow its profits. At its very roots, I think, the Green Stock Boom is about human survival: we must avoid the fate of the Easter Island civilization, and many others like it, whose population collapsed amid resource wars spurred in the wake of exponentially expanding consumption in the presence of limited resources. But a growing segment of the population has been "thinking green" for decades. So why has the Green Stock Boom materialized, in earnest, in only the last few years?

I think the key is oil prices, and to a lesser extent, the backlash against CO2 emissions. Oil prices started to escalate in earnest early in 2003, as the invasion of Iraq migrated from rhetoric to reality. At the time, oil was around $32 a barrel. Now it floats around $85 a barrel -- a 166% increase in just under 5 years, which amounts to a compound annual return of roughly 22%! Almost in lockstep, Exxon (XOM) has followed with approximately the same return (or a bit more, if you account for dividends):

But what's the red line? That's Winslow Green Growth Fund (WGGFX). Winslow invests in green companies generally, not limited to the energy sector; it's the best proxy I can find for a green index with several years of history. As with XOM, Winslow's returns are artificially low due to the exclusion of dividends from the chart. But the implication is unchanged: the Green Stock Boom has tracked oil prices. And more recently, investors have made it clear that they see much more upside in its few profitable heroes, such as SunPower (SPWR), than Big Oil:

No doubt this relates to the concept of "Peak Oil": while it's true that "oil will never run out", oil production (that is, the rate at which it is extracted from the ground, in barrels per year) will inevitably reach a maximum. When this occurs, the world's economies will need to have some other way to sustain the usual few-percent-per-year growth in gross domestic product (GDP). At the same time, computer models of oil production in the years after Peak Oil suggest an annual decline rate on the order of 2% -- that is, only 98% as much oil will be produced in the year following the Peak Oil year, and so on in subsequent years. Without a viable alternative energy source, this could quickly become a catastrophic economic problem: how can we expect to sustain even modest GDP growth, while consuming a few percent less oil per year?

In this scenario, the gap between normal GDP growth and shrinking oil supply is around 5%: we want to continue to grow GDP at a comfortable 3%, while using 2% less oil. For the first few years following Peak Oil, this may not amount to much of a challenge. But the catch is that the problem compounds exponentially: the second year, we need to grow GDP by another 3%, while reducing oil consumption by another 2%, and so on. It doesn't take a math genius to understand that, at some point, without a sufficient alternative energy source, we'll be saving our pennies for the next grocery trip (in an electric car, by the way). Granted, oil supply and demand vary greatly over the course of a year, so these are only rough projections which pertain to multiyear time periods; the important part is that our traditional energy supply will grow with a negative exponent, relative to demand in the absence of an alternative, following Peak Oil.

Most Peak Oil proponents assume that it will occur in the 2008-2018 timeframe. Based on the numbers I've seen, I would have to agree. It is, in any event, inevitable. The question is, will we have sufficient affordable alternative energy in time?

But the financial urgency to find alternatives may explode much sooner than Peak Oil arrives: oil traders are well aware of the phenomenon, and have bid up the price of a barrel year over year at a superinflationary rate, occasional price drops notwithstanding. Oil wars, plant shutdowns, and rig-crippling ocean storms emboldened by a warming atmosphere don't provide price relief, either. The traders may become increasingly willing to hold their positions through downturns, realizing that until a viable alternative is found (or we all become backyard farmers who telecommute to work), the price will inevitably surpass its previous high.

If all this sounds like crazy talk, it's worth noting that it already happened. And I'm not talking about the American gas station lines of the 1970s, which were a modest inconvenience by comparison: when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost its main oil supplier. Fossil fuel input to the country was cut to about half of previous levels. A GDP collapse followed, dropping by about a third from 1989 through 1993. Even for a socialist state, the economic repercussions were staggering -- comparable to the travails of America's Great Depression. Today, it's little wonder that the country is a leader in local organic farming.

Today, ethanol is probably a key component of our escape from Peak Oil. At the moment, it's produced largely from corn, which is problematic because corn feeds humans and livestock. Other proposals for production include switchgrass, sugar beets, yard waste, and even sewage. But before you buy stock in an ethanol producer, consider that most of them appear to be stuck in the research phase, not unlike most Internet startups of the late 1990s. Established producers are generally dependent on commodities such as corn and sugar; as traders accumulate positions in those crops in anticipation of Peak Oil, they actually undermine the viability of ethanol producers by increasing the cost of their raw materials. Normally, the reduced demand would force traders to sell their positions and give way to lower prices. But unlike lumber, oil is not a renewable commodity subject to normal business cycles. Traders know this, and are therefore more willing to hold onto their positions (whether in oil, or obvious alternatives) until the energy crisis is firmly under control, perhaps decades from now.

So if the business case for corn-based ethanol is unclear, the case for solar is more compelling. With tremendous innovation occurring in the field, it seems inevitable that costs will soon become competitive with electricity generated from other sources, especially after accounting for the tax incentives. The problem is, among public solar companies, you find stratospheric P/Es, if earnings exist at all. And this early in the game, it's entirely possible that a no-name startup will invent a dirt cheap alternative to photovoltaic cells and capture the marketplace. Without a triple PhD in chemistry, electrical engineering, and economics, it's a very hard field to navigate.

So what to do? Buy oil? At around $85 a barrel, it seems to have moved too far from OPEC's apparent $60-something comfort zone to sustain this level. But ultimately, oil prices are not under OPEC's control; it's the consumer vs. geology. Guess who wins.

The real winner is set to be alternative energy. If I'm wrong, we'll go extinct, and you won't need to worry about your investments. But I must confess: I'm stumped. How can I possibly find a winner among the thousands of unprofitable startups, plus a few established companies selling for enormous earnings multiples? For the meantime, I think there are better green investments closer to home.

If you're looking for a new house (which, in America, it's clearly a great time to do anyway), take time to learn about the energy efficiency and solar power options available, including any tax breaks that you might receive. Likewise, next time you purchase a car, think hard about how much it will cost you to operate it if gas prices continue to spiral out of control. If you have a job, see if you can arrange to telecommute a few times a month, like I am right now. (It helps to check out Google Docs, where you can edit the same document with several other people at the same time over the Web, for free. That's how we produce these blog entries.) Eat healthy and smart: buy locally grown organic veggies, which are free of the oil inputs required for pesticides, excessive packaging, and global distribution. Start a ride sharing program at your company, for which there are tax benefits in many states. Run a Google search for Peak Oil, and learn about ways to save serious money and reduce your dependence on external energy inputs. Even if Peak Oil doesn't arrive for another century, remember that the sooner you save money, the longer it can compound through investment.

As always, to keep things unbiased, I have no positions in any of the securities discussed. Like many investors, I do have oil positions which have enjoyed a good run. But I'd be much richer, had I invested in the heroes of the Green Stock Boom instead. So at this point, I would do well to heed my own advice.