IYE News and Press, iShares U.S. Energy From 05/04/22

Right now, in the seasonally strong late spring period for oil consumption, many countries are putting sanctions on Russia because of the Ukraine crisis. I am worried that some of these sanctions will backfire, and the price of oil will go parabolic, affecting more than the sanctionin...

With oil prices spiking and investors avoiding volatile names, only a few themes have worked: energy and defensive stocks. With economic growth likely to slow and earnings growth harder to come by, companies able to grow earnings should garner renewed interest. To the extent reces...

During the last Fed rate raising cycle, it took the Federal Reserve five years to raise the fed funds rate to 2.50%. The Fed kept rates far too low for far too long and now we are dealing with the consequences. Both fiscal and monetary policy have been highly inflationary, and we are ...

The stagflation scenario got a little more traction last week with the release of a negative Q1 GDP print on Thursday and hints of more inflation on Friday. April was a really rotten month with everything down but the general commodity indexes. Investing is mostly an exercise in s...

This is an updated coverage of an article we published on March 2nd, 2022. The major update is to assess the risks caused by the surges in the 10-year treasury rates, which was only about 1.7% then and is now pushing toward 3%. The energy sector (represented by XLE and VDE) is cur...

Broad spectrum energy exchange traded funds are preparing themselves for an influx of crucial earnings data on Friday. Industry heavyweights Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron Corporation (CVX) are both ready to deliver Q1 earnings, putting five ETFs with large exposures to the energy giants in th...

The Fed has little control over today’s goods inflation, driven by supply-chain, COVID stimulus, and war. Every time the Fed has increased rates to fight inflation historically, unemployment has increased. Recent events have put an even greater spotlight on energy independe...

The euro has been weakening since last summer, and we are about to experience another episode of conflicting central bank policies, where the Fed will be tightening monetary policy while the ECB will be lagging the Fed. Europe already has had to deal with a horrific price spike in nat...

Only one major asset was up last week: REITs. There were some negative developments that might explain the selling. With the drop in commodities and fears about the impact of the China slowdown, the immediate effect should be for inflation and growth expectations to moderate. We didn&...

The invasion of Ukraine is an inflationary shock to an already inflationary system. The International Energy Agency has warned that the impact on oil supply will peak only from May onwards. Since the war broke out, core government bonds have suffered sustained price declines unsee...