Making Cents Sense

STOCK MARKET • VALUE INVESTING • ENERGY SECTOR • FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS PBF Energy, Marathon Petroleum, Valero, and Phillips 66 are generating enormous profits from an extraordinary refining environment. But I’m not interested in discovering which company looks cheapest when everything is going right. I want to know which one still makes financial sense when the good times disappear. October 8, 2026 · Investment research and opinion There's a particular kind of investment opportunity that makes me simultaneously interested, suspicious, and mildly concerned about the collective intelligence of Wall Street. It usually involves a cyclical industry reporting extraordinary profits, stocks trading at apparently attractive earnings multiples, and an army of enthusiastic investors announcing that they've discovered the bargain of the century. Then the cycle changes, earnings collapse, and everyone acts surprised. Welcome to oil refining. I've been looking at four companies that deser...

I have a weakness for companies that make investors argue. Give me a business everyone loves, and I immediately start wondering how much optimism has already been stuffed into the price. Give me a business everyone hates, and I start checking whether the hatred has become a substitute for reading. Intel occupies the particularly entertaining territory where the spreadsheet sounds encouraged, the skeptics remain unconvinced, and everyone believes the other side has misunderstood something painfully obvious. That makes Intel interesting. It does not automatically make Intel cheap, safe, or destined to reward my patience. I like a comeback story as much as anyone, but the stock market has charged plenty of people admission to watch a comeback that remained permanently in rehearsal. Before getting sentimental about a familiar technology name, I want to know what is improving, what remains expensive, and how much success I am already being asked to finance. The headline needs one qualificat...