Hot Clean Energy Stocks To Watch Right Now

Droughts made headlines throughout 2012�due to their harmful affects on our nation's food supply, but privation wasn't the only drag on our fresh water sources. A recent study shows that oil and natural gas fracking has placed great stress on available fresh water�in areas around the country by taking up measurable amounts of the resource. In some instances in Texas, fracking staked its claim to 20% of total water usage in the regions surrounding production areas.�

Reading that astonishing fact clears up any doubt as to why Texas now mandates the recycling of water used in the fracking process. If we plan on becoming more energy independent through increased production of domestic oil and natural gas, then something will most likely be done at the federal level as well. Which companies stand to benefit? Check out Motley Fool analyst Taylor Muckerman's video below.

Despite this, natural gas still has a great chance at revolutionizing the clean energy movement. This trend toward alternative energy is gaining momentum. One potential opportunity in this field is Clean Energy Fuels, which focuses its natural gas efforts primarily on trucking and fleets. It's poised to make a big impact on an essential industry. Learn everything you need to know about Clean Energy Fuels in The Motley Fool's premium research report on the company. Just click here now to claim your copy today.

10 Best Solar Stocks To Watch Right Now: OmniAmerican Bancorp Inc.(OABC)

OmniAmerican Bancorp, Inc. operates as the holding company for OmniAmerican Bank, which is a federally-chartered savings bank that provides banking services to consumers and businesses in Texas. The company involves in accepting deposits from the general public and investing those deposits together with funds generated from operations and borrowings in loans and investments. Its deposit products consist of savings accounts, interest-bearing and noninterest-bearing demand accounts, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit. The company?s loan products include residential real estate loans, such as one-to-four-family and home equity loans; commercial loans consisting of real estate construction, commercial real estate, and commercial business loans; and consumer loans, which include direct automobile, indirect automobile, and unsecured loans. It operates through its main office in Fort Worth, Texas and 15 branches located in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and Hood County, Texas. The company was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Lisa Levin]

  Omniamerican Bancorp (NASDAQ: OABC) shares fell 1.40% to touch a new 52-week low of $21.08. Omniamerican Bancorp's trailing-twelve-month ROA is 0.44%.

Hot Clean Energy Stocks To Watch Right Now: Banco Santander S.A.(STD)

Banco Santander, S.A. provides a range of banking and financial products. It accepts customer demand, time, and notice deposits, and international and domestic interbank deposits, as well as offers auto financing, personal loans, and credit cards; and automated cash dispensers, savings books updaters, telephone banking services, and electronic and Internet banking services. The company also engages corporate banking, treasury, and investment banking activities. It provides transaction banking services in cash management, trade finance, and basic financing; and corporate finance services for mergers and acquisitions, and asset and capital structuring, as well as involves in the origination activities and risk management, and distribution of structured products and debt in the credit markets; structuring and trading activities in financial markets of interest rate and exchange rate instruments; and activities relating to the equity markets. In addition, it engages in the des ign and management of mutual and pension funds, and life and general insurance products. The company operates primarily in Spain, the United Kingdom, other European countries, Brazil and other Latin American countries, and the United States. As of December 31, 2010, it had 6,063 branch offices in continental Europe; 1,416 branches in the United Kingdom; 5,882 branches in Latin America; and 721 branches in the United States. The company was formerly known as Banco Santander Central Hispano S.A. and changed its name to Banco Santander, S.A. in June 2007. Banco Santander, S.A. was founded in 1857 and is based in Madrid, Spain.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Holly LaFon]

  Charlie: Yes, I have a question. Do you think the opportunity is more in stocks or in debt, or both? If you look at Spain, the biggest companies in Spain, one is a bank, Bank Santander (STD). The other is Telefonica (TEF), a phone company. What other opportunities do you see there?

• [By Chandan Dubey]

  This article will describe what a bank does. Then we will move on to reading the balance sheet of a bank. As an example, I take the balance sheet of one of my holdings, Banco Santander (STD).

Hot Clean Energy Stocks To Watch Right Now: Limoneira Co(LMNR)

Limoneira Company engages in agribusiness and real estate development businesses primarily in the United States. The Company operates in three reportable operating segments; Agribusiness, Rental Operations, and Real Estate Development. The agribusiness segment farms, packages, and sells lemons directly to food service, wholesale, and retail customers. It also grows oranges, and a range of specialty citrus and other crops, such as pummelos, Moro blood oranges, Cara Cara oranges, Satsuma mandarin oranges, Minneola tangelos, pistachios, cherries, and Star Ruby grapefruits. This segment has approximately 1,766 acres of lemons; 1,254 acres of avocados; 1,062 acres of oranges; and 401 acres of specialty citrus and other crops Ventura and Tulare Counties, California. The Rental Operations segment rents residential and commercial facilities; leases land; and provides organic recycling services. This segment owns and maintains approximately 188 residential housing units located in Ventura and Tulare Counties; owns various commercial office buildings and a multi-use facility consisting of a retail convenience store, gas station, car wash, and quick-serve restaurant; and leases approximately 586 acres of land to third party agricultural tenants. The Real Estate Development segment develops land parcels, multi-family housing, and single-family homes. This segment has 1,873 units in various stages of planning and development. The company also processes and packs lemons lemons grown by third parties. Limoneira Company was founded in 1893 and is headquartered in Santa Paula, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Calling all cash flows
  When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Limoneira (Nasdaq: LMNR  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

• [By Eric Volkman]

  Limoneira (NASDAQ: LMNR  ) is maintaining its dividend. The company this week declared a distribution of $0.03750 per share, to be handed out July 16 to shareholders of record as of July 8.

• [By John Udovich]

  Last Friday, small cap Farmland Partners Inc (NYSEMKT: FPI) had an IPO to join Gladstone Land Corp (NASDAQ: LAND), Alico, Inc (NASDAQ: ALCO) and Limoneira Company (NASDAQ: LMNR) as the latest option for retail investors seeking a way to invest in American farmland. After all, there is that old quote attributed to Mark Twain: "Buy land, they're not making it anymore." Moreover, February Wall Street Journal article noted that From 2009 to mid-2013, average prices for agricultural land in the�US rose by half while in Iowa, Nebraska and some other Midwest farm states, prices more than doubled. However, the same article noted that there is mounting evidence that the farmland�boom is fizzling out as�farmland prices in Iowa fell 3% over the second half of last year and those in Nebraska fell 1%. The good news though is that today's agricultural sector looks markedly different than it did during the last farmland bust back in�the early 1980s while Greyson Colvin, the managing partner at investment manager Colvin & Co. (which owns about 7,000 acres of farmland), was quoted as saying: "We think this next 12 months is going to be the best window we've had in the past five years [to invest in farmland].��/p>

Hot Clean Energy Stocks To Watch Right Now: Colony Financial Inc (CLNY)

Colony Financial, Inc. is a real estate investment and finance company. The Company primarily acquires, originates and manages a diversified portfolio of real estate-related debt instruments. The Company focuses on acquiring, originating and managing commercial mortgage loans, which may be performing, sub-performing or non-performing loans (including loan-to-own strategies), and other commercial real estate-related debt investments. The Company is managed by Colony Financial Manager, LLC (the Manager) and an affiliate of the Company.

The Company also may acquire other real estate and real estate-related debt assets. The Company collectively refers to commercial mortgage loans, other commercial real estate-related debt investments, commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), real estate owned (REO), properties and other real estate and real estate-related assets as its target assets.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Amanda Alix]

  For Wall Street types, single-family foreclosures can be bought cheaply and in bulk, then fixed up and rented. Companies like the Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX  ) and Colony Financial (NYSE: CLNY  ) have been very active in this market, with the former purchasing 16,000 homes just last year, and the latter ramping up its own portfolio to approximately 7,000. This new industry has also spawned fresh entrants from the REIT field, Silver Bay Realty (NYSE: SBY  ) and Altisource Residential, (NYSE: RESI  ) two trusts that were spun off earlier this year from parent companies Two Harbors Investment (NYSE: TWO  ) and Altisource Portfolio Solutions (NASDAQ: ASPS  ) , specifically to take advantage of the boom in the foreclosure-to-rental market.

• [By Amanda Alix]

  Is it risky to be putting so much money into an as-yet unproven business model? Some may think so, including investors. Noting the tumble in stock price that newbies like Silver Bay and American Residential have suffered recently, Colony Capital (NYSE: CLNY  ) chief Thomas Barrack postponed�the IPO of his new single-family rental company, Colony American Homes. Similarly, Public Storage (NYSE: PSA  ) has filed for an IPO, too, hoping to take its American Homes 4 Rent unit public -- at some unannounced, future date. In the meantime, American Homes can rely on its $500 million credit facility�with Wells Fargo, which may be bumped up to $1 billion if necessary.

• [By Amanda Alix]

  The investment-to-REIT model is alive and well
  Before the very end of last year, those involved in the single-family purchase and rental business were largely private equity groups�like the Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX  ) , Colony Financial (NYSE: CLNY  ) , and Oaktree Capital (NYSE: OAK  ) , which bought up distressed properties by the truckload.

Hot Clean Energy Stocks To Watch Right Now: Hornbeck Offshore Services(HOS)

Hornbeck Offshore Services, Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates offshore supply vessels (OSVs), multi-purpose support vessels, and a shore-base to provide logistics support and specialty services to the offshore oil and gas exploration and production industry primarily in the United States and Gulf of Mexico. It operates in two segments, Upstream and Downstream. The Upstream segment owns and operates fleets of the U.S.-flagged OSVs that support deepwater and ultra-deepwater exploration, development, production, construction, installation, maintenance, repair, and enhanced oil recovery requirements of the oil and gas industry. This segment also owns conventional OSVs, work class ROVs, and a shore-base facility located in Port Fourchon, Louisiana. In addition, it provides vessel management services for other vessels owners, which include crewing, daily operational management, and maintenance activities. The Downstream segment owns and operates a fleet of ocean-going tug s and tank barges that transport petroleum products, primarily in the northeastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, and Puerto Rico. These tugs and tank barges provide coastwise transportation of refined and bunker grade petroleum products, as well as offer other services, including the support of deepwater well testing and other applications for refining, marketing, and trading companies. As of December 31, 2009, Hornbeck Offshore Services owned and operated a fleet of 47 new generation OSVs, and 9 double-hulled barges and 10 ocean-going tugs. The company was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Covington, Louisiana.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  “There will be blood,” one analyst noted this morning about Hornbeck Offshore Services (HOS) –but his observation could apply to just about the entire offshore-services sector, as Atwood Oceanics (ATW), Diamond Offshore (DO) and Ensco (ESV) tumble.

• [By Traders Reserve]

  For investors who want a piece of this developing trend, Transocean and Seadrill are two of the bigger players in this arena. Other offshore drillers/rig operators are Noble (NE) and Ensco (ESV). Companies that provide services to offshore drillers and benefit from increases in exploration and drilling activity are Gulfmark Offshore (GLF), Hornbeck (HOS), Seacor (CKH) and Tidewater (TDW).

Hot Clean Energy Stocks To Watch Right Now: Kirkland's Inc.(KIRK)

Kirkland?s, Inc. operates as a specialty retailer of home decor and gifts in the United States. Its stores offer various merchandise, including framed art, mirrors, wall decor, candles and related items, lamps, decorative accessories, accent furniture, textiles, garden-related accessories, and artificial floral products. The company?s stores also provide an assortment of holiday merchandise during seasonal periods, as well as items suitable for gift-giving. It operates stores under the Kirkland?s, Kirkland?s Home, Kirkland?s Home Outlet, and Kirkland?s Outlet names. The company operates its stores in enclosed malls and various off-mall venues, including lifestyle centers, power strip centers, outlet centers, and freestanding locations. Kirkland?s, Inc. also sells its products through its Web site kirklands.com. As of March 08, 2012, it operated 299 stores in 30 states. The company was founded in 1966 and is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Calling all cash flows
  When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Kirkland's (Nasdaq: KIRK  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

• [By Teresa Rivas]

  Other home furnishings retailers, including Bed, Bath & Beyond (BBBY), Restoration Hardware (RH) and Kirkland�� (KIRK) were trading down in afternoon trading.

• [By Laura Brodbeck]

  Thursday

  Earnings Expected From: AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVEO), Kirkland��, Inc (NASDAQ: KIRK), Dollar General Corporation (NYSE: DG), Stein Mart, Inc. (SMRT: NASDAQ), Mattress Firm Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: MRFM), SeaWorld Entertainment (NYSE: SEAS), Vaalco Energy Inc (NYSE: EGY) Economic Releases Expected: Chinese retail sales, French CPI, Brazilian retail sales, US retail sales, Japanese industrial production

  Friday