Oil Services: The Leveraged Play on Energy’s Next Move

In recent weeks, I’ve been giving special attention to the oil and gas market.

And I’ve backed that up with several trade recommendations for my paid readership group.

While the underlying oil price is still flat, hovering somewhere between US$50-$60 per barrel, stocks tied to this sector are showing momentum.

That might not be so apparent in the big-name Aussie players like Woodside or Santos.

That’s why I’ve taken my premium readers into the world’s largest market for this sector…

North American O&G Stocks

For Australian investors, this might feel a little niche, given that it’s outside of their comfort zone and beyond the ‘safe’ household ASX names.

But if profits are your bottom line, who cares?

Sure, there could be extra paperwork for your accountant or exchange rate risk, but that pales to the opportunities you have available by looking outside of your backyard.

If you’re chasing commodity markets, you need to have an international focus.

That’s even more important if you’re looking at the biggest portion of the resource market, oil and gas.

From explorers, developers, producers, royalty plays, offshore, onshore, and refiners, there’s enormous breadth in the US oil and gas market.

But one key area I’m focusing on is this:

The oil and gas service market

As I showed you a few weeks ago, despite lacklustre crude prices, oil and gas service stocks are moving.

Now, I don’t normally share specific recommendations or stocks to watch in Mining Memo; I prefer to leave that for our paid readership group.

But to see how my system works in real time, I think it’s useful to revisit some actionable trade opportunities as they take shape.

This is something I plan to do more of, the hits and the misses, of course!

Because it’s core to my investment strategy…

You might know that I’m a former geologist, and that’s certainly helpful for picking resource stocks, but I also find technical analysis incredibly useful.

It’s all about stacking as many odds as possible in your favour. For me, taking a fundamental AND technical approach has been extremely beneficial.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the VanEck Oil Services ETF [NYSE: OIH].

You might recall that I profiled this chart a few weeks ago. Note the time stamp, 11 January 2026:

Source: Trading View

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As I stated back then, the chart was evolving into a healthy setup and aligned nicely with my bullish view on the oil and gas market.

A sequence of higher lows, with prices accumulating into a stronger uptrend.

So, how’s that looking today?

Well, the price action continues to look bullish for the OIH ETF.

Here’s the latest chart:

Source: Trading View

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The red square marks the last price from 11 January.

Since then, the Oil Services ETF has gained about 12% over the past three weeks.

Not bad, given that most investors and fund managers would be happy to achieve a 12% return over 12 months!

But remember, this is still very early in a potential shift back to oil and gas stocks.

Sound interesting?

Well, this ETF could certainly offer some excellent long-term upside.

But if you are looking to take this one step further, I suggest focusing on specific stock opportunities within the ETF.

You see, the oil and gas sector (itself) is full of diverse opportunities for investors.

Some companies build new wells, others assist in the actual recovery of oil and gas, while others may focus exclusively on transporting this critical commodity.

As an investor, it requires a thorough investigation to identify which specific stocks to target, but it could be well worth your time.

If you’d like to discover what companies I’m recommending to my premium readers, you can do so here.

Until next time.