Here are the stocks I’m watching lately, supported by votes of confidence from the guest analysts brought in lately on BNN:

Arc Energy Trust - (AET.UN-T): $28-29
Crescent Point Energy - (CPU.UN-T): $33-34
Husky Energy - (HSE-T): $43-44
Freehold Royalty Trust - (FRU.UN-T): $21-22
Diana Shipping - (DSX-N): $28-29

Interesting that most of them are oil plays. Oil per barrel is really cheap right now, and that means all the oil stocks are on sale. I really want to take the opportunity to buy some up, but with limited cash, I can either do this or put some more money in US stocks for increasing my US cashflow (since most US stocks are superbly on sale right now, too). Not sure which decision to take.

The Loonie could be falling again if oil stays low. In that case I’d better buy my US stocks now while I don’t lose money in the exchange rate. On the other hand, because oil is low right now, all the great Canadian energy plays are on sale too.

Hmmm…. what would you do? If you’re Canadian, or living/working in Canada, how are you planning to take advantage or protect the recent highs of the Loonie?

Haven’t yet heard of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Company (TSX: ZNN)? I hadn’t either until two days ago. Honda Schmonda and the fuel-cell cars that are only available in SoCal. You can buy your ZENN car (that stands for Zero Emissions, No Noise) in Oak Forest, IL, Bozeman, MT and Fayetteville, NC. And pretty much everywhere in between (unfortunately, they’re not yet available in Canada, even though they’re a Canadian company - ironic, eh?):).

ZENN Motor Company was started by Ian Clifford - a professional photographer (BFA NSCAD ‘84)! - who had a desire to clean up the air and make the world a better place while sitting idling in a traffic jam one day, exhaust fumes all around him. Clifford began his research in 1995 and the company went through two previous incarnations as Feel Good Cars and Dauphine Electrics. Clifford teamed up with EEStor, a Texas-based maker of energy storage systems (whose main investors also invested in Google, Palm and Amazon when they were starting up). This was 2001. By 2006, Feel Good Cars was listed on the TSX.V. In June 2006, Feel Good Cars became the ZENN Motor Company.

Can’t Drive on the Highway, Just in The City

So far the ZENN can’t go fast enough and is not licensed for highway driving. But if you live in Manhattan or any other major urban area and rarely leave the city, it’s perfect. Cost is reasonable, around $17,000 plus taxes. I know that if I was in the market for buying a car I’d check them out. They’ve got a hatchback design and you can even order them with a sunroof for extra.

Great Stock to Watch

My regular readers know I’m mostly a dividends investor, but I just can’t help looking at positive potential growth opportunities such as this. The ZENN is currently trading around $5.55 (no dividends) CAD, but I think there’s a lot more room for growth. They’ve got distribution throughout the US market and are starting to implement in Quebec, Canada. One California town has adopted the ZENN for all of its municipal vehicles. And there are more stories like that on their site. The stock is on sale a bit from its 52-week high at $6.89, but still up quite considerably from its 52-week low at $2.60. Earnings per share are still in the red at -$0.27, but I’m guessing that can’t last for long in this environment. Besides, they only just went public two years ago. Two years ago we were in a radically different economic and energy climate. I’ll bet ZENN is doing quite well now with the Honda back-up and new influx of compact-buyers and spike in electric car interest everywhere.

Just thought I’d let you know - what do you think of the ZENN? Would you pass it over because of its looks or design? Or because it can’t do highways? One solution is that you could save your regular clunker for the highways until it totally clunks out, meanwhile only using the ZENN in the city. It’s the cities, after all, where smog and air pollution are often the worst. We need all the help we can get.

I’d love to hear what you think - if you’ve Stumbled over here and are new to the site, drop me a comment down below, and subscribe to my feed for more updates like this one (click on the orange box near the logo).

Alot of attention over the last couple of days since Genepax’s press release has been given to how one can invest in their company and in their proprietary water energy system (WES). With WES, the car runs on water alone. Some kind of “battery” or “electrical generation machine” separates the hydrogen from the oxygen and uses electrons from the hydrogen to power the car. It’s not at all a perpetual motion machine, and they don’t claim it is. They claim two things only:

(1) it does not use fossil fuels
(2) it does not produce carbon emissions.

If they need a “battery” of some kind to do this, great! A friend of mine pointed out that the reason they’re taking it public in this way (as opposed to just privately getting financing) is so that the world will know they’ve done this. A big auto-maker like GM might otherwise have bought the technology up and buried it (GM did have a fully electrical car available already in the 80’s…).

So How Can You Invest in Genepax?

The short and quick answer is that you can’t. #1, they’re not a public company yet. So they’re not listed on any stock exchanges. They’re a private research and development (R+D) firm looking for more financing so they can mass-market their car. This means they have no shares for you to buy. Not individually or through ETFs.

#2 But you can invest in whomever will give them a production contract. This is why you should pay attention to the story and wait to find out what large corporation or venture capitalist steps in to finance the next stage of their production. It might be possible for you to then invest in that company. You can research who the candidates might be now. What firms have financed similar technologies in the past?

#3 It might also be a good time to invest in Honda and Toyota. You know they’re going to try to match this with a similar technology if they are not the ones buying this up. One difference between Honda’s FCX Clarity and Genepax’s water car, obviously, is that the Clarity does not run on water. The Clarity might still be a better bet if it doesn’t use up yet another precious resource as water is (although, to their credit, Genepax’s car is purported to be able to run even using rain and seawater. If that is the case, then they’ve really got it made.)

GM also has fuel-cell technology going on, but the Chevy fuel-cell won’t be available for another 6 years. It doesn’t look as nice as the Clarity, either. The Clarity will be available in California next month. That’s where I’d be putting my money. The question is whether the new viability of fuel-cells for the market will bring oil prices down (due to less demand)? Probably not. It’s going to be many years before the entire globe is using fuel-cell. The airline industry alone can gobble up the rest of the world’s oil no problem. Of course, Genepax has their eye on taking their own technology to the skies and seas as well.