Reported earnings don’t tell the whole story of a company’s profits. They are based on accounting rules designed for debt investors, not equity investors, and are manipulated by companies to manage earnings. Only economic earnings provide a complete and unadulterated measure of profitability.
Investors who want exposure to this sector should buy a basket of Attractive-or-better rated stocks and avoid paying undeserved fees. Get the list of my top 20 Energy stocks to build your own portfolio.
The Energy sector ranks fifth out of the ten sectors as detailed in my sector rankings for ETFs and mutual funds. It gets my Neutral rating, which is based on aggregation of ratings of 20 ETFs and 79 mutual funds in the Energy sector as of October 10, 2012.
As one financial scandal follows another, it seems the good guys are having a tougher time catching the bad guys. Recent revelations about MF Global’s ponzi scheme are another reminder of how our regulatory and oversight systems seem to let whales pass through their net.
Two of the three stocks added to our large/mid cap Most Dangerous stocks list for November are from the energy sector. Those stocks are Energy XXI (Bermuda) Ltd. (EXXI) and Superior Energy Services (SPN) – both get my very dangerous rating as do all of the Most Dangerous stocks.
All of the energy sector ETFs get a dangerous rating, which means you should sell them.
I recommend investors avoid all energy sector ETFs. There are no ETFs in the energy sector with an attractive-or-better rating from my methodology at New Constructs. None of the ETFs rank better than the S&P500.
Investors should sell all dangerous-rated energy sector ETFs. The five ETFs below are the worst-rated of all energy sector ETFs:
We recommend investors avoid all energy sector ETFs. We found no ETFs in the sector that offer investors attractive investment merit and acceptable structural integrity. We also rate the investment merit of the top-9 energy sector ETFs.