PTRA - Why Clean Energy Stocks Cratered This Week
In what's becoming a wild ride for investors, clean energy stocks crashed this week. The market had been shifting back toward growth and higher-risk stocks early in 2023, but that momentum just reversed again.
Shares of some of the riskier clean energy companies have been hit hardest. According to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence , shares of industrial electric vehicle company Proterra (NASDAQ: PTRA) were off by 20.3% as of 11:20 a.m. Friday morning since the close of trading last week. FuelCell Energy (NASDAQ: FCEL) was down by 14.4%, and Workhorse Group (NASDAQ: WKHS) dropped 16.1%.
The drop in clean energy sector players this week was largely driven by a broader market sell-off. Federal Reserve officials spoke in multiple places this week about their plans to continue to raise interest rates over the next year in order to fight inflation and cool off the economy, and investors were weighing how that would impact various types of businesses. Only a week ago, it seemed likely that the central bank's series of boosts to the benchmark federal funds rate would soon come to an end, but after the Labor Department released a report last Friday that showed that 517,000 new jobs were created in January as the unemployment rate fell to just 3.4%, it appears more likely that rate hikes will continue.
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Why Clean Energy Stocks Cratered This Week