What happened
Solar energy stocks got crushed again on Monday as the market sold off. The S&P 500 ended the session down 3.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 4.3%. But solar stocks magnified those losses.
At their lows for the day, SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG -10.50%) was off by 12.2%, Sunrun (RUN -9.91%) was down 11.6%, and SunPower (SPWR -9.35%) was down 10.5%. They ended Monday’s session down 10.5%, 9.9%, and 9.4%, respectively.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Not only was the stock market down, but West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell 6.8% Monday. In the short term, solar stocks often rise and fall along with the price of oil and that was a big dip. As the theory goes, lower oil prices make it less cost effective to switch to solar, while higher oil makes solar an even better deal. That’s not really what we see in the solar…