America's natural gas glut is causing a re-think of demand patterns on the part of solar panel companies.

Chinese panel makers like JA Solar (JASO), Trina Solar (TSL) and Yingli Solar (YGE) feel confident they will see a doubling of demand in their home market this year, to 4 Gwatts of capacity. That's out of a total global demand that could be as low as 30 Gwatts (according to Bloomberg) or as much as 35 Gwatts (according to Trina).

This will be good news for those who buy solar ETFs like KWT and TAN, which lost over half their value in the last year. The ETFs are dominated by big Chinese solar

Solar stocks have been severely punished due to a glut of inventory, which has lowered profit margins. There has also been concerns over cuts in government subsidies. Many European countries are imposing new austerity measures and following Italy's lead, Germany has recently proposed subsidy cuts for solar installations. However, the proposal to cut subsidies from the German Government failed to receive unanimous backing for the time being. This could give solar makers a reprieve at least in the short-term.

More good news could be coming from China. Many of the largest solar companies are based in China and some believe that Chinese demand could counteract weak demand from Europe in 2012. A recent Bloomberg article details this potentially positive news as follows:

China may double its installations of solar panels this year, absorbing excess production that depressed prices and margins in 2011, chief executive officers from two of the industry's

Warren Buffett-controlled MidAmerican Energy Holdings announced that it has established a new business arm as a conduit for a deepening of the company's move into the unregulated renewables market. The new vehicle, MidAmerican Renewables, LLC, will oversee wind, geothermal, solar and hydro projects to produce energy for the renewables market.

MidAmerican Renewables will be based in Des Moines, Iowa, and will encompass MidAmerican Wind, LLC; MidAmerican Geothermal, LLC; MidAmerican Solar, LLC; MidAmerican Hydro, LLC; and project development and commercial management.

The company of course already has significant exposure to the wind market and late last year raised eyebrows in the clean energy world by making two significant deals related to two solar farms:

• First, MidAmerican purchased 100% of First Solar's $2bn, 550 MW Topaz Solar Farm, in San Luis Obispo County, California. You can read more on that deal here.

• Secondly, MidAmerican acquired 49% of NRG Energy's $1.8bn Agua Caliente

Academic research has shown that corporate insiders have an edge over ordinary investors, especially when it comes to purchasing stocks. Even small purchases are marginally profitable. On the other hand, insider sales had not beaten the market as they are often motivated by diversification or liquidity needs. Insiders usually have a lot of exposure to their company's performance. It does not make sense for them to increase their exposure unless they believe that their purchases have a high probability of being profitable.

In this article, we are going to focus on the technology stocks insiders are buying recently. All companies have a market cap of at least $2 billion and were purchased by at least one insider during the past three months. The market data is sourced from Finviz.

By Chris Seabury

One of the challenges with shorting stocks is finding companies that have the downward pressure to head dramatically lower. This can be tricky based on conflicting signals and emotions about the corporation. To identify the right stocks to short requires utilizing both technical and fundamental ideas. This will provide specific insights about the total amount of weakness. To determine possible short candidates requires examining Yingli Green Energy (YGE), AOL Inc. (AOL), Clearwire (CLWR), First Solar (FSLR) and Level 3 Communication (LVLT). Therefore, the use of all analysis and opinions should be a starting point for future research.

Yingli Green Energy

Yingli Green Energy has profit margins of 6.71% and operating margins of 12.57%. There is no forward price earnings ratio. The balance sheet includes revenues of $2.56 billion, $938.47 million in cash and $2.19 billion in debt. During the last year earnings have been steadily declining going