Never Sell Your Energy Stocks - Nick Colas and Jessica Rabe of DataTrek
March 30, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readNick Colas and Jessica Rabe, co-founders of DataTrek Research, discuss the current oil price spike driving energy stocks amid broader market weakness. They draw on historical patterns from 1990's Gulf crisis, statistical oversold measures, and volatility data to guide positioning, emphasizing energy as a hedge and data-driven entry points for equities.
Energy Stocks as an Oil Hedge
Energy stocks serve as the primary defense against sudden oil price surges, a lesson reinforced by the sector's drop to just 2% of the S&P 500 weighting—its lowest in decades, down from 20% in 1980. Colas recalls 1990, when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait doubled oil to $40-45 per barrel by mid-October, well before Gulf War I combat. Energy stocks peaked with oil, while the S&P bottomed on oil's peak day, rallying afterward as uncertainty resolved. Today, with oil at $102 and hitting new highs, energy shares like Exxon (now at record $175, trading at 25x earnings—above Nvidia's forward multiple) are following suit. Stability requires no new highs for at least a week; until then, the market may not have bottomed.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **🎙️ Introduction: Nick Collis & Jessica Rabe**
- 2 (01:40) **Energy Stocks as Oil Spike Hedge**
- 3 (02:50) **1990 Gulf War Oil Analog**
- 4 (06:00) **Energy vs. Tech Valuation & Capital Discipline**
- 5 (10:10) **S&P 500 & NASDAQ Oversold Analysis**
- 6 (16:00) **Software Selloff vs. Energy Disconnect**
- 7 (18:30) **Historical SPX Down 10%+ Years**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
On this episode of What Did We Learn, Josh Brown, Nick Colas and Jessica Rabe discuss: Oil, energy stocks, and how rising prices are impacting equities and the broader market outlook.
How close the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are to historically oversold levels, what a 2 standard deviation drawdown means, and why those setups have led to strong forward returns in the past.
Why a -10% year for the S&P 500 is so rare, the three major catalysts behind big drawdowns, and how today’s environment is showing elements of all of them.
Plus, what could shift the narrative, the risks of a deeper decline, and what the VIX is signaling about volatility and future returns.
This episode is sponsored by Teucrium. Find out more at https://teucrium.com/agricultural-commodity-etfs
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