Edwards' Real Nanotech Index, Week 2

O.K. so I’m late posting this. You get what you pay for. Remember, this blog uses all volunteer labor (however, if you would like to hire me as a consultant or speaker, e-mail me at steven.alan.edwards@gmail.com).

The reason I’m late is that I was down in New Orleans visiting my daughter, Alison and her husband, Nathan, during Mardi Gras. What a party! The city is in ruins. The levees have yet to be fixed. Hurricane season is only 90 days away. But the Big Easy rolls on…

Alison and Nathan Bays


A Mardi Gras parade is emblematic of naked human GREED. Masked men and women, the elevated chosen few, bequeath favors on the screaming horde of humanity below, all raising their hands and hoping to be rewarded. And what do they get? Beads, beads, and more brightly colored beads. We came home with about 50 lbs of useless, worthless colored plastic. My 55 year-old wife Sally dyed her hair purple and perfected a little dance that seem to make her a bead magnet. If I wasn’t around, who knows what moves she might have added to her act? Next year, she wants to dress up and go back as Josephine, Napoleon’s paramour.

Sally "Rosie" Edwards

Anyway, speaking of greed, how did the Edwards’ Real Nanotech Index do in its first week of existence? Not great; overall it declined from its initial 100 reading to 99.07. The only gainers were two nanomaterials companies, Altair Nanotechnology and Oxonics, and one electronics company, NVE Co, although most stock prices were little changed. Venture capital company Arrowhead Research showed the largest decline.

The Edwards' Real Nanotech Index

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The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on nanotechnology recently to a standing room only audience and most heard only good things, according to a Forbes article. Edwards’ Real Nanotech Index (ERNI) companies represented included NVE Co., Altair Nanotechnologies and Nanophase Technologies. A less upbeat article from Business Week—Going Broke to Stay Alive—which concerns the high cost of cancer treatment, mentions ERNI company American Pharmaceutical Partners.

Battling Nanotech Indexes

Fellow blogger Darrell Brookstein mentions the Edwards' Real Nanotech Index in order to distinguish it from the official Nanotechnology.com index, which is about to debut shortly. Readers may wonder what is going on, does the right hand know what the left hand is doing or vice versa? Well, actually, no. I am an independent voice here on Nanotechnology.com. They don’t pay my retirement benefits. We cooperate and sometimes we collaborate, but we don’t always agree. In this case, however, it is a case of apples and oranges. My nanotechnology index is more (as Darrell puts it) an ‘exercise’ to measure the stock market’s valuation of fairly narrowly-defined nanotech stocks. The official Nanotechnology.com index is a more broadly “small technology” index designed, as I understand it, to be a proprietary guide to investors. In this space, I do not advise investors. I do, however, write investment columns as a guest editor for Redzone Profits.