What is it that makes a stock a "solar stock?" What is it that defines "best?"
In one sense, I suppose you could say that Elon Musk's Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has been the best solar stock of the decade. After all, even if it's best known for its Model S, Model X, and Model 3 electric cars, Tesla also owns a solar energy business, building and selling equipment to harvest (solar panels) and store (electric batteries) energy from the sun. And if you're defining "best" as "producing the biggest stock profits," Tesla has been by far the best performing solar stock of the decade, growing 1,876% in value since its IPO on June 29, 2010 at an offer price of $17 a share.
But even as a lawyer, I was never a huge fan of open and shut cases. (Too obvious. Too boring.) So instead of focusing on Tesla, let's examine three companies that fit the bill as "solar stocks" in more interesting ways, and that have also done pretty well for their shareholders over the past decade: Synopsys (NASDAQ: SNPS), Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), and SolarEdge Technologies (NASDAQ: SEDG).