Jet fuel is only the latest example... Market shockwaves will continue... A new mining supercycle is here... Explosive gains in long-forgotten assets... Find your highest-conviction business... Then forget you own it...
In December, I (Dan Ferris) had no idea an energy crisis was coming in...
I had no idea the U.S. would go to war with Iran.
I had no idea that oil prices would soar into triple-digit territory.
And I had no idea that a shortage of jet fuel would make headlines this month.
But I did know, as I've learned over the past three decades, something that I've told subscribers to the Digest, Extreme Value, and The Ferris Report more than once...
Great opportunities in commodities and commodity stocks have their roots in supply shocks. They can be helped by new sources of demand... But overall, commodities tend to do really well after investment has lagged and critical supplies have run down.
Under it all is one key insight: The modern world runs on refined fuels, natural gas, chemicals, atmospheric and industrial gases, base metals, and a slew of other commodities. There are no viable substitutes for them. So when the supply falls, higher prices must eventually follow.
When commodity prices fall, producers have less of an incentive to keep producing, and the supply begins to contract. Lower prices cut into profits, maybe leaving some companies operating at a loss. And investors sour on commodity producers as investments.
Eventually, though, the contracted supply leads to higher prices – and producers' stocks light up. This stage of the cycle can produce explosive gains.
I wrote in the December issue of The Ferris Report:
The supply implications [for refiners] are severe right now and potentially dire...
[The U.S. Energy Information Administration ("EIA") is] forecasting that in 2026, total inventories of gasoline, distillate fuel oil (which includes diesel), and jet fuel will hit their lowest levels since 2000. A March 2025 EIA forecast said jet fuel inventories could hit their lowest levels since 1963...
[Low gas and jet-fuel inventories]... will likely help raise refiners' overall profit margins, which will help our new recommendations perform better.
Sure enough, a Wednesday article from the Wall Street Journal has the headline: "Jet-Fuel Prices Are Spiking and Trump's Advisers Are Worried." Here's an excerpt...
Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins. U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March – up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.
President Donald Trump has said he believes the war will end soon, but the conflict continues to send shockwaves through markets.
"No frills" air carrier Spirit Airlines has canceled all flights and is liquidating.
In a recent court filing, lenders said the company's plan to emerge from bankruptcy – its second in less than a year – wasn't feasible if Spirit couldn't demonstrate its "viability at current (or possibly higher) fuel prices." It couldn't, and now it's out of business.
In December, I'd responded to low inventories of gasoline and jet fuel by recommending two oil refiners...
Those two stocks have been huge beneficiaries of the war. Refiners' "3-2-1 crack spreads" – their profit margins for turning three barrels of crude oil into two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of diesel or heating oil – have soared to their highest level since 2022:
Again, I didn't predict the Iran war. But it showed I was right about the refiners – and I didn't have to wait long for this proof. My two December recommendations are already up 44% and 47% as of yesterday's close.
If you'd just held the S&P 500 Index during that period – like everyone who funnels their 401(k) straight into index funds every paycheck – you'd be up just 6%. These recommendations earned 7 times that return.
That's the kind of performance a neglected commodity can add to your portfolio. And I believe the commodity cycle has only just begun to yield these kinds of results. It still has a lot more room to run. I'll have another energy-related commodity stock in the upcoming May issue of The Ferris Report.
I'm not the only person who thinks the commodity bull market has serious long-term legs...
Australia-based Regal Partners has $21 billion under management and is overweight commodity stocks. The group's investment director, Charlie Aitken, echoed my own sentiments about copper in a recent Reuters article:
Copper is at the intersection of everything and critically undersupplied. There is no doubt in my mind that copper prices could double or triple over the next decade and owning copper producers will deliver multiples of the spot price growth.
Meanwhile, BlackRock portfolio manager Evy Hambro said capital is just beginning to rotate out of expensive tech stocks and into hard assets. Hambro said we're in "the early stages of a commodity supercycle."
The folks Reuters interviewed noticed something else, too. As the article put it...
The pullback in gold during an active geopolitical crisis is notable, investors say. Rather than seeking shelter in traditional safe havens, markets appear to be betting that the Iran conflict will catalyze a real-economy response, with energy security and infrastructure investment requiring copper, steel, and rare earths.
In other words, investors are too bullish on industrial metals and other useful hard assets to worry about gold as a safe haven. And that's true despite the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty playing out in the Strait of Hormuz.
It all suggests that this is the real deal, a commodity bull market that has only just begun. The jet-fuel headlines are just this week's evidence that the market is adjusting to a lot more than the Iran War. The war is simply the catalyst that showed the world how supply-constrained many essential commodities are today. You'll be seeing more of this over the next six to 12 months.
If you want an easy, obvious bit of evidence, just look at how oil's international benchmark has averaged above $100 per barrel since the middle of March. It suggests that markets either don't believe the Iran war will end soon... or perhaps doubt that ending the war would necessarily lower oil prices.
In my recent research for new commodity stocks, I realized something about the setup I found in December...
A neglected asset with explosive potential isn't just a commodity strategy...
It works with all kinds of stocks.
Consider Intel (INTC)...
As recently as last summer, Intel was one of the most hated and neglected stocks in the market. The chipmaker had peaked in August 2000 just shy of $75 per share. Then it went into a 26-year funk, sinking as low as $12.08 per share in February 2009.
During bull runs in January 2020 and April 2021, it traded above $68 per share, but it never eclipsed the 2000 highs. It collapsed again and traded in the high teens and low $20s from August 2024 to August 2025.
The world viewed Intel as missing out completely on the rise and dominance of smartphones. And as time went on, it seemed less and less likely that it would ever return to its former glory.
You probably know what happened next...
In August, the U.S. government acquired 10% of Intel's stock. Since then, it has reported excellent results for its foundry business (manufacturing other folks' chip designs) and its Xeon 6 processors for AI servers.
And only then did it make a new all-time high.
The stock's price chart shows 26 years of neglect, from its dot-com bubble peak until last year. The stock confounded investors time and time again for more than two decades. Now it's up 500% from its April 8, 2025 "tariff tantrum" bottom.
If you're thinking that waiting 26 years for a trade to play out is too long, I couldn't agree more. But the point is not the length of time. It's about the utter neglect.
Once an asset gets as neglected as Intel, its recovery can yield utterly explosive performance.
I realize that few investors are interested in identifying sorely neglected targets...
It just seems idiotic to look for a stock that, for all we know, everybody will still hate next year and the year after that... maybe for another 10 years, 20 years, or 26 years. Folks want what's hot now, or what they believe will become hot next.
But here's where it gets really interesting... Some evidence suggests you don't need to buy a long-forgotten asset before it eclipses its old highs. In fact, maybe that event isn't the end of the trade, but the signal that it's ready for liftoff...
Intel broke through its August 2000 high on April 24. Then it rose more than 30% in the next nine trading sessions.
Consider these examples...
The Nasdaq Composite Index broke through its March 2000 high in April 2015. The index has been volatile, but it's up 420% since then, versus some 250% for the S&P 500.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index finally broke through its December 1989 high in February 2024. It has also been volatile, but is up roughly 60% since then, compared with 44% for the S&P 500.
So maybe the breakout above a long-forgotten all-time high isn't the end of the trade. Maybe it's the signal that everything people have thought about the asset for decades is no longer true.
It's hard to get conviction about an asset the world has left for dead...
If your reaction to all this is, "Interesting but no thanks," I certainly understand. It's probably better to start with whatever sort of stock or asset gives you the most conviction in the first place.
My highest levels of conviction in stocks have come from mining-related businesses trading at cyclical lows, run by excellent management teams who are focused on prudent capital allocation.
I've expressed my deepest conviction about two of these stocks in my career.
In 2014, I said that Canadian royalty company Altius Minerals was my No. 1 recommendation. I had spent time with the management team learning about the business and even touring some of its assets in Newfoundland and Labrador. The team and its CEO, Brian Dalton, impressed me with their strict focus on their business model and rigorous discipline about when they'd deploy capital.
Thanks to Altius' focus on royalties and staking out original mineral prospects, it required less capital than any other portion of the mining business. Altius is less of a miner than an investment bank that caters to mining companies.
I never recommended selling Altius, even when the stock had declined as much as 50% on one occasion.
Today, Extreme Value subscribers who followed my advice are sitting on a total return (including dividends) of about 692% since I first recommended shares in 2009. You could have bought Altius a number of times in the past 17 years and still seen excellent multibagger gains. (It's currently well above the buy price I recommend in Extreme Value, though.)
Then, in January 2018, I said a new stock had dethroned Altius as my new No. 1 recommendation... Toronto-based Sprott (SII). Once again, I'd known the management for years and believed deeply in their ability to exercise discipline and good judgment in growing and maintaining the business.
Like Altius, Sprott requires little capital. It's the largest independent asset-management operation focused solely on mining and metals. It's up about 664% since my 2018 Extreme Value recommendation.
I've started looking for my next high-conviction stock...
Once more, I'm looking first at stocks that trade in the great white north. That country has treated me exceedingly well twice before. Maybe it's hiding one more unappreciated small-cap gem.
With folks once again deeply in love with U.S. stocks, there's a decent chance of finding a great business with huge long-term potential hiding in plain sight just across the border.
To be clear, I don't know if my new No. 1 stock will be a long-forgotten tech company or a Canadian-traded small cap pursuing a lean business model with minimal capital expenditures.
All I know is that, once I find it, I'm going to tell my subscribers to buy it and forget they own it for at least 10 years.
New 52-week highs (as of 5/7/26): Altius Minerals (ALS.TO), Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), Healthpeak Properties (DOC), W.W. Grainger (GWW), Hawthorn Bancshares (HWBK), Lamar Advertising (LAMR), and Cloudflare (NET).
In today's mailbag, feedback on part of Tuesday's Digest... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"In the article shown with [Tuesday's Digest] Mike Barrett said, 'The Iran war has altered the market for food imports into Iran and the Middle East... That's destroying demand for the crops grown by American farmers...'.
"This statement shows a dangerous and concerning lack of understanding of the real impact that the situation will have on food in America and elsewhere. There is not just a shortage of oil but also a serious shortage of fertilizers without which American farmers will be severely limited in the amount of food they can grow. There may not be enough for domestic demand let alone exports." – Stansberry Alliance member Hugh H.
Corey McLaughlin comment: Thanks for the note, Hugh. Let me clarify...
What you're quoting is just a small excerpt that we cited from one of Mike's issues of his Select Value Opportunities newsletter about just one angle of the war impacts – "demand destruction" – that we were discussing the other day.
Across Stansberry Research, a number of our analysts and editors have written about the war's effect on the fertilizer/food supply chain and other commodities since the conflict began. For example, Dan wrote about it in depth in the March 13 Digest, discussing precisely what you're talking about...
Oil and gas aren't the only important commodities that move through the Strait of Hormuz...
Last Friday, I mentioned the four ingredients of modern living: cement, steel, plastic, and ammonia (for fertilizer).
Various estimates suggest roughly half the world's population is fed by food grown with nitrogen-based fertilizers (and this nitrogen is produced from ammonia).
Roughly one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. About half of global seaborne sulfur trade passes through the strait, as does nearly 50% of global urea exports. Roughly 90% of sulfur demand is used for sulfuric acid, 60% of which is used to make fertilizers. Urea is also used to make fertilizers.
With the strait closed, prices are already rising. For example, the price of urea is up 35% this year.
We wouldn't want any of our essays to sound like we're unaware of the risks for fertilizers and various commodities stemming from the conflict in the Persian Gulf... because we're probably one of the few sources that have discussed this topic at length for months.
Mike, who has worked closely with Dan for years in Extreme Value, even lives on a farm and works crops (including pecans). This gives him a unique perspective on the markets that he shares with us and subscribers.
Mike discussed this part of his life, and dealing with changing weather on the farm, on an episode of the Stansberry Investor Hour with Dan and me last year. You can watch, listen, or read the whole conversation here.
Among other things, Mike said, "I really have great respect for my farmer brothers and sisters out there who do this for a living because, man, it's tough."
And we know we have a lot of farmers among our subscribers. As always, we love to hear their perspectives, too.
Good investing,
Dan Ferris
Medford, Oregon
May 8, 2026
