Minutes Digest for Jan 15 2021

In October, we saw that active oil rigs had finally stopped declining, and more recently Jay pointed out that they've jumped 50% in 19 weeks.

With another rise this week, counts have increased on 18 out of the 21 weeks since they set a low.

This has happened only a few times since 1988, all within the past 15 years. The index underlying the XLE fund did well after those other instances, even this long after the data series bottomed.

Exploration & production stocks are more highly geared to the data, so returns in the index underlying the XOP fund did even better, with double digits gains each time over the next 2 months.