ETF Reverse Stock Split Highlights Solar Death (TAN, FSLR, GTAT, TSL, WFR)

The Guggenheim Solar ETF (NYSE: TAN) has been a total dud due to the fact that solar shares are only liked now by short sellers and the White House.  These stocks have turned out to be just absolutely awful and the poor performance of these holdings killed the performance of this ETF.  The performance was so bad that the ETF decided to conduct a 1-for-10 reverse stock split to get its share price back up.

Guggenheim Partners, LLC, has now executed that 1-for-10 reverse share split and Yahoo! Finance mistakenly has it trading up 900% or so. While the ETF will continue to trade on the NYSE Arca under the same “TAN” stock ticker, it may take a while for all of the quote systems to catch up.

Yahoo! Finance indicates a 907% gain, Google Finance shows it properly with a 0.59% gain, and AOL’s DailyFinance site has it properly listed as well. 

First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) is the top holding of the US-traded stocks with over 10% weighting, and this is down over 75% from its 52-week highs.

GT Advanced Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: GTAT) is another high-weighting at almost 7.3% weighting.  This one is still down not even by half from its 52-week high, a miracle by solar stock standards today.

TRINA SOLAR LTD. (NYSE: TSL) is 5.22% of the weighting, and it is down by more than two-thirds from its 52-week high..

MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. (NYSE: WFR) accounts for 4.3% of the weighting and it has been a painful hold down by almost three-quarters from its 52-week high.

What was the best way to make a small fortune over the last year?  By investing a large fortune in solar stocks of late.

JON C. OGG