Hold on tight?

I've been nervous about checking my investment portfolio of recent, news of markets all over the world feeling the impact of the US economy slowdown not helping me feel very confident about its performance. I'm mostly invested in Canadian stock, which is obviously going for a wild ride.

When I reviewed my performance stats for the past year, they were pretty poor, barely any gain. However, I recently received the statement for my group RRSP investments (through work) and the funds in which I placed my money did a lot worse than I did, which is surprising because my personal portfolio should be more volatile. I'm mainly invested in stock.

One happy piece of news today was from a company I recently invested in called Lignol Energy, a small startup here in BC that has developed technology to prepare fuel-grade ethanol from cellulosic biomass. When I read about their technology, it made sense to me. Instead of growing corn as a mono-culture to produce ethanol (something that has been criticized by environmentalists as not really being a sustainable approach to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels), Lignol uses what pretty much amounts to scraps from the forestry industry. Pretty cool, no? Well, the US Department of Energy also seems to think so, as they just awarded $30 million to Lignol for the construction of an ethanol plant. I doubt this stock will send me to retirement at 45, but I really enjoy seeing a local company with a cool green tech solution getting some recognition from the market.

As for the rest of my stock? Well, I'm holding on tight. Now is definitely NOT the time to sell. I do have some cash coming in though, any good buying opportunities?