natural gas it is soaring today you can see it's up over 18% it's up 50% this year and that puts it on Pace where its best year since all the way back in 2016 speaking of 2016 Joe you have some exposure here eqt yes I'm going to continue to talk about natural gas as the fuel in the energy sector that investors and our viewers should be focusing on in 2025 I truly believe that's where the opportunity is I think in terms of existing inventories we're beginning to work off excess Supply now you have a colder
than anticipated weather forecast over the next 15 days in addition to that remember that natural gas offers the solution in terms of power generation for all of the utilities that have this insatiable demand coming from data centers and they're partnering with the mega cap companies like we saw with Microsoft 3 Mile Island and Constellation Energy so natural gas is the solution in that formula in terms of providing power generation I think natural gas in 25 should be an investor Focus all right natural gas a 52 we high today Bren I want to come over to
you you have a lot of broad energy ownership uh energy transfer Diamond Back uh Viper as well I just want to see how you see the energy trade overall when it comes to this month and going into 2025 yeah so we talked about the strength in the dollar obviously that in energy materials is a really big headwind I think in the space you really got to pick your spots I mean we see energy transfer up there energy transfer is a pip pipeline like Kinder Morgan energy transfer and Kinder up like 45 and 55% year-to date
energy transfer also is like a 7% distribution yield I also like the mineral right companies which are very cap cap light like a Viper energy up almost 60% year to date and so I think you really have to pick your spots you know I sold Devon earlier in the quarter it just been an underperformer for a couple of years relative or on an absolute basis and so I think stay Capital light stay in the Road of hydrocarbons which are the pipelines and I think that will be another good year for both sectors sub sectors within
energy okay Rob I want to come over to you uh you're looking at energy as a hedge to geopolitical risk you have to explain that because we've seen geopolitical geopolitical risk rise in the oil Market still trade lower uh in fact a lot of the Year WTI below 70 bucks a barrel IGN ignored it there's no question I think that's a little bit of a signal from the uh from from the markets there might be some worries uh about growth coming but no question that there they are have historically been a great hedge against geopolitical
attention attentions against up upside surprises in inflation I think the key story here is the companies are more efficient operators and capital allocators they're focused also on returning cash to shareholders valuation is reasonable but the big question is for energy is how much do they deteriorate if economic growth deteriorates it's causing prices to break below and so far we've seen lower prices support consumption but what happens with growth so you know we have a diversified basket it trades at 12 times earnings we're very excited about that I think it's an overweight for us and it's
a place that you know acts as this barbell hedge with potentially some economic leverage all right WTI is up almost 5% month to date
