3 Stocks Near 52-Week Highs Worth Selling: The Washington Post Company (WPO), Move Inc. (MOVE), Green Plains Renewable Energy Inc. (GPRE)

The renewable energy that just doesn’t make sense
I admit to not being a huge fan of alternative energies given the amount of infrastructure that I feel needs to be put in place to make them even remotely effective is still decades off. However, even I can see long-term use in alternative energies like wind and solar power. That was one of the reasons that my fellow Fools and I unanimously chose SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ:SPWR) to outperform as it offers to most efficient panels on the market and its residential business is picking up rapidly. Shares have more than doubled since that call. But, there’s another form of alternative energy available that makes little to no sense to me: ethanol.

Ethanol is a far and away my least favorite alternative energy. It provides less energy than standard gasoline and is wholly reliant on weather patterns and corn prices for ethanol companies’ underlying profitability. That’s why I’m suggesting it’s time to run away from Green Plains Renewable Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRE). Last year’s drought nearly crushed Green Plains, and corn prices are still much higher than they were at this time last year, which will result in lower margins for all ethanol producers. Not to mention that Green Plains has missed Wall Street’s estimates (badly) in four of the past five quarters. I will pass on ethanol producers nearly every time.

Foolish roundup
This week’s theme is “Can it actually produce what analysts expect?” In all three cases, I’d say no, with Kaplan weighing down Washington Post, inconsistent ad revenue weighing down Move, and high corn prices and unpredictable weather patterns stifling Green Plains Renewable Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRE).

I’m so confident in my three calls that I plan to make a CAPScall of underperform on each one. The question is: Would you do the same?

The article 3 Stocks Near 52-Week Highs Worth Selling originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Sean Williams.

Fool contributor Sean Williams has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle @TMFUltraLong.The Motley Fool owns shares of Western Digital..

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