Cree's Shares Surged: What You Need to Know

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of LED lighting specialist Cree (Nasdaq: CREE  ) lit up a 12.4% intraday price jump on heavy volume.

So what: Other alternative lighting experts also soared today: Veeco Instruments (Nasdaq: VECO  ) gained as much as 19.5%, OLED guru Universal Display (Nasdaq: PANL  ) notched a 17.4% top, and microcap SemiLEDS (Nasdaq: LEDS  ) crushed 'em all with a 41% jump. Why all this alt-light enthusiasm? Because China plans to ban incandescent light bulbs over the next five years, thus creating a ginormous market for replacements. Conversely, light bulb giants Philips (NYSE: PHG  ) , Siemens (NYSE: SI  ) , and General Electric (NYSE: GE  ) all fell 3% or more today.

Now what: In particular, these Westerners are jumping for joy because China's local LED industry is several years behind the technology curve according to industry analysts. Regular old 100-watt bulbs will be banned from sale in China less than a year from now, with steps down the power scale to outlaw 15-watt bulbs in 2016. America already has a similar plan going on, but China is simply a much larger market.

Interested in more info about Cree? Click here to add it to My Watchlist.