The Best Recommendations Are the Ones That Make People Cancel Their Subscriptions

The ongoing war in Iran highlights a neglected reality: we live in an oil-fuelled economy.

That’s why over the last few months, I’ve been writing extensively about the need to focus on traditional energy stocks.

For my paid readership group, we’ve backed that up with at least six oil & gas AND coal recommendations across our two portfolios.

We started adding exposure in October 2025 and continued through until last month, February 2026.

In hindsight, that seems rational and sensible, after all, oil and gas stocks were due to rise given the inevitable geopolitical volatility, right?

Well, the thing is, until events in Iran erupted this month, the ‘oil trade’ was dismissed by most as stupidity.

Why take on the opportunity cost of putting your capital in O&G stocks while virtually everything else was surging?

That was the attitude for most investors at the beginning of 2026.

That’s why, with each oil, gas, or coal recommendation that went out, it was followed by a bunch of cancellation requests!

To say that investing in O&G stocks was unpopular is an understatement.

Don’t be a Headline Chaser

Here’s the thing: we could get a lot more readers if we simply recommended stocks that were ‘trendy.’

That’s because most investors rely on headlines to take the plunge and invest in stocks.

But my role isn’t to follow ‘popular investment themes’; in my view, that’s reckless and goes against what I stand for as an investor.

It exposes readers to excessive risk when markets turn. Like they’re doing right now.

Instead, I like to pinpoint where future opportunities could emerge.

To put it bluntly: to build wealth in this market, you can’t follow the crowd.

But you CAN look for early turning signals

Often, the biggest returns are made at the onset of a new bull market.

And as early as late 2025, traditional energy stocks were showing signs of an upward turn, despite news suggesting otherwise.

That’s what I’ve shown you in the past, like this update focused on the setup underway in oil and gas service companies:

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

But at the time, financial institutions, governments, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) were unanimously downplaying the price of fossil fuels for 2026.

Here’s what the IEA published in its oil and gas forecast for the year ahead:

“Combined with the hefty surplus that has built up in storage tanks and at sea over the past year [2025], this would leave the market with a significant buffer well in excess of demand, which is forecast to increase by 930 kb/d in 2026.”

In other words, the world’s leading energy agency, the global authority on oil and gas supply and demand, recently reported that supply will significantly exceed demand in 2026.

The narrative was overwhelmingly bearish.

So, why did we invest in O&G companies?

Here’s the secret: The combination of strengthening price action amidst ongoing headline negativity.

When that happens, you know a market could be close to turning.

It’s a sequence that I’ve repeated for my paid readership group many times before.

Like the Chinese real estate panic in 2023 and 2024, and its supposed fallout for resource stocks.

Yes, they pulled back significantly, but many strong names held support around long-term upward trends, making this one of the best opportunities to add them to your portfolio.

And we did… Zeroing in on quality producers and snapping them up for heavy discounts.

This was a superb buying opportunity; long-term readers benefited from our advice by taking advantage of a resource market that sank to multi-year lows.

And most importantly, doing the EXACT opposite of what the headlines told them to do.

It’s a strategy we’ll repeat time and again.

If that meshes with you, then you can check out more of my work here.