Clean energy, EV stocks see big gains on climate bill optimism

Yahoo Finance's Ines Ferré breaks down the stocks gaining the most in anticipation that the Inflation Reduction Act will be signed into law.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: We're currently keeping an eye on clean energy stocks boosted by optimism over the Inflation Reduction Act. That legislation set to bring incentives and tax credits to companies, as Brian just alluded to, utilities and individuals in the clean energy space, and stocks are responding in a big way. Let's bring in Ines Ferré who's tracking all of that for us today. Ines.

INES FERRE: Yeah, Akiko, anything from fuel cell developers to solar companies to wind companies. Let's take a look at our YFi Interactive boards so you can see some of the clean energy stocks that we've been tracking. And what you really want to look at-- this is an intraday, you want to look at the one-month chart because since this bill was announced, these are the gains that we have seen since late July for these companies.

I'm going to pull it up this way, so you can see some of the biggest gainers. Array Technologies. Array Technologies is a solar tracker company, up 97% month-to-date. You can also see, for example, First Solar up 80-- 76% month-to-date, up 81% over the last month. You've got SunPower, which installs solar panels, up 59% over the last 21 days. You get the idea.

These solar companies, these wind companies, anything to do with clean energy have seen big gains since this bill was announced. And if we pull up a year-to-date chart, take a look at these. These stocks, a lot of these have outperformed the broader markets. I mean, you've got the S&P 500 still down about 10% year-to-date. And look at these. These are up double-digit percentages year-to-date.

And for some of these-- I'm going to pull up the EV chart since you guys were also talking earlier about the electric vehicle space. We are seeing that over the last month, these EV stocks have seen gains. But one in particular that we've been really watching, Plug Power, we had the CEO Andy Marsh on of Plug Power yesterday with Julie and Brian, up month-to-date 83% since this bill was announced, with the CEO saying that this bill pushes their path to profitability of six months into early 2024. So it's significant for these companies.