When it’s Your Time, it is Your Time

By: Yale Bock

“When it’s your time, it is your time.” — Bruno Mars

Indiana University officially hired Curt Cignetti as its new head football coach on November 30, 2023. In the prior 18 years, Indiana had winning records in just two of those eighteen seasons. As most observant college football fans will tell you, Mr. Cignetti’s transformation of one of the perennial losing programs is considered at the very least a legendary accomplishment. Some rank it as the greatest coaching accomplishment ever. The brief clip below at his initial press conference sums it up nicely:

“It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.” How can you not love that description? More importantly, he went out and proved it, and last year won the national championship with an undefeated season. Legendary stuff. So, why does this matter for investors?

With the equity markets in a five-week losing trend, the selloff has been quite difficult for many companies. If you are a long-term investor, the recent environment is nothing out of the ordinary. Most U.S.-listed stocks have suffered from a dearth of interest over the last fifteen years. The small and microcap area continues to face the problem of a lack of buyers because of that issue. The most successful equities over the last decade were found in software entities with superb growth records compiled over many years. They, too, fell prey to the flightiness of institutional capital and have sold off quite hard over the last three months. During the outset of the year, gold and silver companies had tremendous runs, but, alas, have taken it on the chin and sold off in the last thirty days. The recent difficulty in equity markets highlights the potentially treacherous terrain that sometimes engulfs capital markets. One could easily point to the cause of the travails, which is the war in Iran. The change in oil prices and the related thought that maybe interest rate cuts are now off the table, and potentially rate hikes are now possible as the prime reason for the recent heavy selling. Is there anything we can look at and say, yes, this has worked? For sure.

Without question, the prime beneficiary of the current situation is the energy sector. For those not paying attention, black gold has rocketed higher from $60 per barrel of Brent to somewhere north of $110 as I write this. The term energy is a vague term as there are many different energy forms- oil, gas, liquified gas, coal, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, and biofuels. What is most misunderstood about the energy area is that there are several aspects of energy you can own. For our purposes, let’s narrow things down to any type related to oil and gas. For those unfamiliar with the industry, the effort to extract and then generate is exploration and production. Changing the form of the underlying material and then moving it and selling it is refining, storage, pipelines, shipping, and marketing. Each has its own unique characteristics, but many investors find the industry too capital-intensive or complex to invest in. I would argue this is true in some pieces of the complex, but not so much with others. The one difficulty with it is that it is viewed as being dependent on the price of the underlying commodity. With a little over one hundred million barrels of oil per day consumed across the globe, the last decade has seen many producers spend less money on replacing and adding to their existing reserves. Typically, in any year, about 5% of the existing resource base needs to be replaced. If you curtail spending on extraction and have natural depletion, what you own is going to slowly trend lower.

The conflict in Iran brings the matter of logistics into the equation. Iran has long controlled the critical shipping area known as the Strait of Hormuz. It is a narrow chokepoint that connects the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It serves as the sole sea passage for over twenty percent of global seaborne oil. With Iran taking the posture that no oil will pass through this area without it being the traffic light on what passes and what does not, the world’s countries are essentially having to answer to a regime that has historically been hostile towards not only America and Israel, but many other countries across the globe as well. Not a sustainable situation in any way.

From an investor standpoint, this kind of situation is why energy needs to be a part of a portfolio. Nobody has any idea how this will play out, though my feeling is that it will eventually be resolved. It might be in terms the world can accept, maybe a little tougher, maybe a whole lot better. Regardless, energy is something people must have, like healthcare, utilities, shelter, food and beverages, and transportation, among others. You don’t know when you get a great return, maybe never in all likelihood, and what causes it. You only know it is worth owning and continuing to own. Energy investors have waited a long time for their moment, so there is merit in what Bruno Mars said.

Originally posted on April 1, 2026 on Y H & C Investments blog and newsletter

DISCLOSURES

Return figures come from the March 31, 2026, edition of the Wall St. Journal. Y H & C Investments may have positions in companies mentioned in this newsletter. Nothing in the newsletter should be taken as an offer to buy or sell individual securities. It is the responsibility of each investor to research the investments mentioned so they can decide on the appropriateness and suitability of the investments consistent with their risk tolerance, risk constraints, and return objectives.