No Energy? No AI

Summary

The Important Part: Investing with Liz Thomas

Episode Summary – June 10, 2026

Episode Title: No Energy? No AI
Guests: Alex Steele, Principal at Drive Path Advisors; Liz Thomas, Chief Market Strategist at SoFi

---

Brief Overview

In this episode, Liz Thomas explores the crucial intersection between global energy markets and the explosive growth in artificial intelligence (AI) alongside the ripple effects on inflation, geopolitics, and investment. Liz is joined by Alex Steele, an energy communications expert, who helps explain why investors—across all sectors—need to pay close attention to developments in energy, especially as energy access becomes central to driving technological innovation and economic stability. The discussion dives deep into macro risks, structural challenges, geopolitical shifts, and how the next wave of AI and infrastructure needs may force a fundamental rethink of both energy policy and portfolios.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Introduction & Context: Why Energy Now?

• [03:00] Macro Forces: Energy markets are at the forefront of global discussion due to geopolitical strife (notably in the Middle East), inflation pressures, and demand spikes from AI infrastructure.
  • "Coming into 2026, nobody thought that we were going to be talking about energy more than anything else." – Liz Thomas [03:04]

The Complexity and Fragility of Global Energy

• [03:40] Alex’s Macro Take: The energy market is in turmoil, with immediate and long-term impacts.

  • "It’s ugly. The repercussions of this will be there for decades. You have the short term effect, which is literally what happens to oil prices... but eventually that's going to trickle to the West." – Alex Steele [03:42]

• [04:16] Supply Does Not Equal Security: Ceasefires or de-escalations may not result in actual energy supply restoration.

  • "A ceasefire doesn’t mean supply. Those are two totally different things." – Alex Steele [04:16]

• [05:17] Uncertainty in Energy Operations: Energy companies face unpredictable futures and must plan around both cost and access risks—both geopolitical and infrastructural.

Lessons from Geopolitics & Shifting Energy Profiles

• [07:29] Asia’s Energy Strategy: Asian nations have diversified energy sources, dominating solar panel supply chains and ramping up coal use to ensure reliability amid volatility.
  • "They’ve done that with solar... imports into China from Saudi Arabia... they're using coal again." – Alex Steele [07:29]
• [09:01] U.S. as a Potential Energy Anchor: Europe's pivot to non-Russian energy (notably U.S. LNG) and ongoing debates on the reliability of U.S. energy exports under changing administrations.
  • "The question... Is the U.S. seen as a reliable, low cost, secure partner?" – Alex Steele [09:01]

Political Risk and Market Paralysis

• [10:04] Political Gridlock: Companies may hesitate on major moves depending on U.S. electoral outcomes, but cannot afford to halt operations entirely due to competitive and logistical pressures.
  • "You can’t put the world on hold for two years. I think it'll be really interesting to see what happens in the midterms..." – Liz Thomas [11:18]

Changing Supply and Demand Dynamics

• [12:26] Fundamentals Upended: Traditional supply-demand rules are less predictive; price curves are ‘bananas’ and don’t fully reflect real-world risk.

  • "The prices you’re seeing, just to use oil as an example, are, and you can quote me, bananas." – Alex Steele [12:26]

  • "There is nothing that's showing any kind of demand destruction at all. I think that that conversation is dead. It's above all energy." – Alex Steele [14:36]

Knock-on Effects: Inflation and the Real Economy

• [15:19] Demand Destruction: True demand destruction may come from outright unavailability, not just price, forcing substitutions that are often temporary fixes (“band aids”).

  • "There will be demand destruction because the product won't be there. Like if you cannot get your oil to make a product, then that product is no longer there." – Alex Steele [15:19]

• [20:52] Energy is in Everything: The shockwaves of high or absent energy prices touch every part of the consumer economy—clothing, plastics, cement, agriculture, transportation, and beyond.

  • "There is oil in your sweater... There's part of like a chemical that comes from oil that's in your sweater." – Alex Steele [20:52]
  • "If you don't have fertilizer, then you can't grow stuff. So literally that impacts food supply." – Alex Steele [22:03]

Inflation: Short-term Spikes vs. Long-term Structural Change

• [22:59] Structural Worries: While short-term inflation is hard to predict, Alex is more concerned about persistent, upward pressure from energy 'onshoring', diversification, and security initiatives.
  • "I'm more concerned with structural longer term inflation from many different directions... because that's all going to cost more." – Alex Steele [22:59]
• [24:13] Onshoring Analogy: Just as shifting manufacturing home takes years, changing energy supply takes time and may push inflation structurally higher.

The Americas as a New OPEC?

• [26:40] U.S., Canada, South America Coalition: Potential for a bloc that rivals OPEC, harnessing North and South American resources and technologies.
  • "The US is now a new OPEC... and this is a new OPEC now that has much more muscles to flex when it comes to energy dominance." – Alex Steele [26:40]
• [28:02] Venezuela & Argentina: Shale opportunities in Argentina (Vaca Muerta) and the reopening of Venezuela to companies as signals of shifting global supply strategies, but clouded by U.S. regulatory and political risk.
  • "You want to dot your t’s 100 times, dot your I’s and cross your t’s 100 times." – Alex Steele [28:54]

AI’s Energy Consumption & Investment Implications

• [29:31] Tech Stocks: The New Energy Stocks?: AI’s energy appetite means Big Tech must behave—and perhaps be valued—like capital-intensive utilities.

  • "I don't understand why tech stocks are not trading like an energy stock yet. Because now they are capital intensive, shovel in the ground companies building data centers." – Alex Steele [29:31]

• [33:28] Will There Be Enough Energy for AI?

  • "Is there even going to be enough energy available to keep this AI buildup moving? Does it, does it at some point constrain?" – Liz Thomas [33:28]
  • "No. Yes, 100%." – Alex Steele [33:39]

• Infrastructure as Bottleneck: Even if the energy supply was unlimited, the infrastructure for distribution and transmission is a key constraint.

  • "If you had all the energy in the world, could you keep building? Yes. I guarantee you though, you don’t have the infrastructure to do that." – Alex Steele [33:53]

Renewables: Missed Promises and Realities

• [37:04] Renewables as an Afterthought: Despite early optimism, renewables have not met investor return expectations, primarily due to supply chain shocks, financing challenges, and intermittency issues.

  • "Supply, now supply chain issues was a big one. That's really what helped tank offshore wind about four years ago..." – Alex Steele [37:57]

• [40:17] Price Competition and Substitution: As long as gas remains cheap, renewables struggle to compete unless paired with reliable storage or mixed-source solutions. Subsidies remain a contentious but essential part of the landscape.

  • "The intermittency is a problem, but it doesn't mean that you toss out the baby in the bathwater." – Alex Steele [40:17]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You don’t win on tech if you don’t have energy access.” – Alex Steele [00:21, recurring theme at 32:09]
• “The prices that you’re seeing just to use oil as an example, are, and you can quote me, bananas.” – Alex Steele [12:26]
• “A ceasefire doesn’t mean supply.” – Alex Steele [04:16]
• “If you had all the energy in the world, could you keep building? Yes. I guarantee you though, you don’t have the infrastructure to do that.” – Alex Steele [33:53]
• "There is oil in your sweater…there's a part of a chemical that comes from oil that's in your sweater.” – Alex Steele [20:52]
• “You want to dot your t’s 100 times, dot your I’s and cross your t’s 100 times.” – Alex Steele [28:54]
• “The US is now a new OPEC…a new OPEC now that has much more muscles to flex when it comes to energy dominance.” – Alex Steele [26:40]

---

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction and Macro Energy Stress: [00:00]–[04:16]
• Geopolitics, Asia, and Energy Security: [07:29]–[09:40]
• Impact of US Political Cycles: [10:04]–[11:18]
• Changing Supply/Demand and Market Structure: [12:26]–[15:04]
• Inflation, Consumer Impact, and Knock-on Effects: [15:19]–[22:59]
• US/Canada/South America as Energy Powers; Venezuela: [26:40]–[29:05]
• AI’s Massive Energy Demand & Infrastructure Challenge: [29:31]–[33:55]
• Renewables—Disappointments & Prospects: [37:04]–[41:30]
• What Excites and Worries Experts: [41:30]–[43:54]

---

What’s Next? Excitements and Concerns for the Future

• Excited for:
  • Fervo’s IPO as a test of investor appetite in geothermal [41:30]
  • Rapid scaling of new technologies (geothermal, fusion, SMRs)
  • Large-scale consolidation in energy industry, especially E&P (exploration and production) [41:36]
• Most Concerned About:
  • Permitting blockages and political gridlock in the U.S.
  • Inability to execute infrastructure projects to keep up with demand [43:18]
  • Ongoing volatility from geopolitical flashpoints like Iran

---

Closing Thoughts

Liz and Alex stress that energy’s role in the global economy—and specifically, its relationship to AI-led growth—cannot be overstated. Energy insecurity and infrastructural limitations could become the most important constraints on technological progress, not just cyclical headwinds. As supply chains shift, inflation remains sticky, and tech’s insatiable energy hunger mounts, both investors and industry leaders must reckon with an energy landscape in fundamental transition.

“You don’t win on tech if you don’t have energy access.” – Alex Steele [32:09]

---

For weekly analysis and more:

• Read Liz Thomas’s column every Thursday on SoFi’s website
• Sign up for the “On the Money” newsletter
• Follow Liz on X/Twitter @LizThomasStrat

---

Transcript

[Liz Thomas]

Is there even going to be enough energy available to keep this AI buildup moving? Does it, does it, at some point, help us with your macro take on where we are in energy right now?

[Alex Steele]

Okay, so it's ugly. The prices that you're seeing just to use oil as an example, are, and you can quote me bananas.

[Liz Thomas]

But I want you to explain this to us.

[Alex Steele]

Oh, gosh, she's going to test me now. You want to dot your t's 100 times, dot your I's, and cross your t's 100 times. Because if a different administration comes in and has different feelings, you want to make sure you're not getting called up to Capitol Hill for doing something wrong. You don't win on tech if you don't have energy access.

[Liz Thomas]

Hi there. I'm Liz Thomas, head of investment strategy at SoFi. And this is the important part. Energy shows up in everything. It determines the price you pay at the pump, how much your utility bills are, and oftentimes even determines the direction of the global economy. Add geopolitical forces and AI energy demand to that, and the ripple effects are huge. So as an investor, where do we stand? How should we think about energy as both a risk and an opportunity? To help answer that is Alex Steele. Alex is the principal at Drive Path Advisors and an energy communications expert with deep experience covering global energy markets. Alex, welcome.

[Alex Steele]

Thank you.

[Liz Thomas]

I have to tell everybody that's listening and watching this. Alex and I met on the set of Bloomberg TV because that's where she was before this new career path, which I'm excited to hear about too. And she was an anchor and I was the guest. So the mics were totally flipped.

[Alex Steele]

Totally flipped.

[Liz Thomas]

Before we get into it, I have to say nothing in this episode should be treated as a recommendation from SOFI to buy or sell securities. And this is not investment advice. Okay, so you have pivoted. No longer on television and now working in energy. Now, you had experience and interest in energy before. Yeah. So let's. Let's just real quick. Why the pivot? Why now? How much fun are you having?

[Alex Steele]

Set the stage. Credibility. Why? You should listen to me. Got you. Why does anybody care about what I say? My daughter definitely does not. So for me, I covered energy my whole career, which is almost 20 years as a broadcast journalist. When I went to Bloomberg about, I guess, 14 and a half years ago, at this point, I still covered energy even when I was a reporter. And it was sort of like my home base and energy kind of started out as straight up oil and gas. I Covered it during the shale revolution and then it moved towards green stuff, clean tech, and then now energy transition, and then now whatever phase that we are in now. So I pivoted back in July of 2025 and dry path Advisors is a strategic advisory firm that helps energy companies talk better, removes friction in their business. You talk better, you make more money. And I mean energy. I mean all energy. I mean oil and gas pipelines, lng, hydrogen fusion, nuclear, wind, we do all of that. So it's a full service shop on the investor communication side and strategic communication side.

[Liz Thomas]

Okay, well, you're here at a good time.

[Alex Steele]

Yes, it's been busy.

[Liz Thomas]

I think that's obvious. And if, maybe, maybe you saw that coming. I don't know. But yes, I'm sure you've got a lot going on, but I think this is a perfect time in the year too, because we're coming up on the midpoint of the year. Coming into 2026, nobody thought that we were going to be talking about energy more than anything else. But let's talk about just at a macro level first, all the noise that's going on. But we're thinking about Iran, we're thinking about gas prices, we're thinking about inflation and inflation for the rest of the year. So help us with your macro take on, on where we are in energy right now.

[Alex Steele]

Okay, so it's ugly.

[Liz Thomas]

Okay.

[Alex Steele]

Is the biggest takeaway here the upbeat. Yeah. The repercussions of this will be there for decades. And what I mean by that is you have the short term effect, which is literally what happens to oil prices and then what happens to the refined product side, which in some cases is so much tight in the actual oil barrels. And you can see that with some Asian countries cutting how much you can drive, when you can turn on the lights, whether or not you can go to school, and eventually that's going to trickle to the West. It's unavoidable. It's like what would happen with COVID when you had supply chain issues. Eventually it trickled. So there's the short term. And as Rystad put it, a ceasefire doesn't mean supply.

[Liz Thomas]

Right.

[Alex Steele]

Those are two totally different things.

[Liz Thomas]

Right.

[Alex Steele]

So that's the short term, the longer term, and this is something that I've been talking about a lot with my colleagues, is if you're an energy company today of any kind, and you're looking at your business model for the next 30 years, what do you want to be? How do you supply energy that is reliable and affordable and secure? Now, that narrative was there before what happened with Iran, but now it's so much more critical. So, for example, if I'm an energy company, like an oil and gas company, for example, do I have a customer that comes to me and says, look, I, I want my oil in my gas now, when I want it, and I will pay whatever you want for it. But if there is an issue with a supply chain issue or if there's another war, I don't care. I want my supply. Okay, so then I'm the energy company and I'm like, cool, I'm going to take that money, you betcha. But then what do I do? How do I make sure that I can get that customer, the oil and gas, when they need it, on demand, no matter where I am in the world and that dynamic, and no matter

[Liz Thomas]

how much it costs at the time.

[Alex Steele]

No matter how much it costs at the time.

[Liz Thomas]

Right.

[Alex Steele]

I have no idea how you operate like that as an energy company. I mean, how do you price that

[Liz Thomas]

kind of change and that kind of risk guidance?

[Alex Steele]

Exactly. In addition to that, you know, there was a conversation a couple weeks ago I had with someone where it was like, hey, we can build a lot of pipes in the US that's cool. But what happens if Iran sends a drone over here and bombs it? I'm not saying that's going to happen, but these conversations are very different than when they were, say, 10 years ago, because we see how fragile even having secure, reliable infrastructure actually is. So that's sort of the broader stake and what that means as an investor and what that means as a CEO of an energy company, do you buy other ones? Do you buy smaller ones?

[Liz Thomas]

Do you.

[Alex Steele]

How do you, how do you diversify and manage that risk for the medium to longer term?

[Liz Thomas]

Yeah. So one of the things I've been wondering, because when you have conflict like this or when you have something a shock to the globe, a lot of times it, number one, we all learn more about whatever that sector is or whatever that region is than we ever knew before. And I think we all, all know more about energy, about the Middle east, even about how reliant Asia is on Middle Eastern energy. But it also exposes fragilities. And I can't stop thinking about some of the similarities to when Russia invaded Ukraine, the US put sanctions on Russia. There were all kinds of controls on Russia. Europe did it too. Their financial system was basically frozen off from the rest of the world. And a lot of times we refer to it as weaponization of the dollar. So other countries saw that happen. And said, well, I don't want that to happen to me. So I'm going to start diversifying away from the dollar as a reserve currency. I'm going to start piling up gold, all these other things to do so that they can't be a victim to that sort of aggression. Right. Does this time in the globe expose fragilities like that for Asia, for example, in the sense of now, not only is it going to change maybe the profit cycle, the supply and demand dynamics, but does it change how regions like Asia will want to get their energy in the future? Are they looking at the US and saying, that was smart. You guys became energy independent. You're not so reliant anymore. How do we figure out how to do that?

[Alex Steele]

Well, they already are, to be honest, in many ways. I mean, look at how they have completely dominated the supply chain when it comes to solar, for example. So they basically messed up everybody else when it comes to solar, because, no, no one can really build a solar farm without China, for example. We might change that. We're going to try and do it. And there's domestic manufacturing incentives and all that. But at the end of the day, they've done that with solar. And you can also see it with, say, imports into China, like oil imports into China from Saudi Arabia are now at like 13 million barrels or something. They were 48 million barrels back in February. Right. Why? So they had inventory. Sure. They're going to run down their inventories. They're using coal. They're using coal again. So what this does is it's twofold. One, in the short term, it's, I don't care what energy I have, just get me energy so I can turn on my lights. In which case, does that extend coal's lifespan? Then in places where it makes more sense, can we pivot more quickly to solar? Because we need something else other than just reliance on oil and gas. Just depends on what your supply chain is. It depends on where you are in the world. It just, it's a, it's a negotiation from that perspective. But I think that is a much different situation in terms of the global fractures of a supply chain than Russia to Europe specifically. And we saw Europe deal with that too. Right. All of a sudden they're like, oh, my God, can't rely just on Russian gas. So what'd they do? They started to build out more infrastructure to then import LNG from the United States. That's a huge trade tool that President Trump has used. They're also moving towards other forms of energy.

[Liz Thomas]

Right.

[Alex Steele]

They're like, oops, too bad we just booted our nuclear program. Germany right now, France looks super smart having a nuclear facility just going to move that conversation even more. The question, though, and how this is where the US Comes into play. Is the US Seen as a reliable, low cost, secure partner? And it's twofold. One, will President Trump use it in trade negotiations and weaponize lng, which has been done with Iran, which has been done with Russia. Will that continue to be the case? And. Or if you get a different person in the White House with different priorities in 2028, is it going to be, you know what, I'm going to pull that permit for an LNG export terminal just like you pulled that offshore wind permit because you didn't like it.

[Liz Thomas]

I've wondered this for a while. We've got midterms coming up later this year. Let's say that the market, and just basically the US in general assumes that the Democrats are going to take control of Congress. Then do we spend the next two years before the next new administration comes in in just a waiting period? Do we just hold off on all big changes like that? Do companies wait?

[Alex Steele]

Yeah.

[Liz Thomas]

And what does that period look like?

[Alex Steele]

So it's something that I've talked a lot about with companies, too. I'm like, I think if you just get the House, that's one thing, because they'll be so hamstrung. It's like, isn't all you can do are hearings? In which case, yes, that will happen, particularly if oil companies are minting money because of what's happening with Iran. Right. We even saw some conversations over in the UK about that as well. Right. War profiteering, sending that money back to the government and taxes or such. So, yes, and. Or if you get the Senate, I don't know, man. That's like all bets up. But I think what we've seen with the offshore wind permits are particularly interesting because if you ask privately the majority of oil and gas companies, whether or not they like wind doesn't matter. They're like, we cannot have that permit pulled because we know that we are hated by certain groups in politics and they will use that as a template to hurt us as well. Yeah, that is definitely a fear. So if you're a company, you can't just stop because everyone else is moving forward and because there is a really good case for US Energy, particularly exporting it. And what are you gonna do? Tell Dataseer and tell Google, like, I'm so sorry, I'm not gonna talk to you about building this thing near you because I'm worried that Congress in two years might pull a permit like, no,

[Liz Thomas]

you can't do that, right?

[Alex Steele]

Shareholders would hate you.

[Liz Thomas]

And that's, that's, it's like you can't put the world on hold for two years. So I think it'll be really interesting to see what happens in the midterms and then what happens in the following year and a half or so. So the other thing I wonder what I'm hearing from you is there's going to be more creative solutions to finding energy sources for regions, for countries so that they're not so reliant on the Mid east, but different, differently creative than what the US did. The US still created oil, right? We had the shale revolution, but it was still a similar type of energy. But now the creative solutions might be solar, they might be wind, they might be all kinds of other things. Coal, going back to coal for China, does that change the supply demand dynamic? So for a long time, what I mean by that is energy prices in particular were almost entirely dependent on, we've got geopolitical factors, but also just on supply and demand. Is there enough demand, is there enough supply to fill that demand? Demand always told us if the economy was in a good place or not, and then the supply decided whether or not prices would rise or fall. Has the supply demand dynamic changed?

[Alex Steele]

Yeah, totally, in many different ways. One, energy a smaller percentage of global GDP than it has been in the past, right? So you're going to have economic sensitivity, be a little different than you were, say in the 70s, but almost more importantly, the prices that you're seeing, just to use oil as an example, are, and you can quote me bananas, like the fact that we are not in severe triple digits like near 200, based on the literal worst case scenario that has ever happened for the oil market,

[Liz Thomas]

meaning shutting down the Strait of Hormuz is bananas. Okay?

[Alex Steele]

As in many companies, many geopolitical strategists would hypothesize on what that would look like and what it would mean, but no one actually thought it would happen because it's so crazy. So if you take a look at, say, the oil curve, and for those of you who are not super energy nerds, the oil curve is what prices are today and what they are every month out for the next, say, five plus years. And that is the indication of what companies and traders and whomever you are, shippers look at to say what the supply and demand dynamic is. So if you take out the first couple months because that's going to be distorted in weird ways to the up and to the downside. And you look for the longer term, even that feels weird.

[Liz Thomas]

Too low. Too low, Yeah.

[Alex Steele]

I mean now you can make the argument. All right, fine, so we're near, we're between 70 and 80. All right. We might have been between like 55 and 70 before. So that has been a material re rating in the back end, which is quite hard to do. But that price signal is a little confusing. And the producers that I talk to, as I try and drag it out of them, it feels like around 90 is where you would make different long term decisions about drilling more. Now we've seen some on the margin for the short term, but for the most part longer term investment decisions have not yet truly been affected. This goes back to my original point, which is where they're going to go drill. So if I'm a producer and I'm looking at that and you're looking at US shale for example, a lot of that good rock's been drilled. Medium rock gets better the higher oil prices go. So there might be some more recovery there for sure.

[Liz Thomas]

Because it's more expensive.

[Alex Steele]

Because yeah, if you're like top tier cheap rock, cheaper to drill. Right. Tier two gets a little more expensive. Tier three, super expensive, all drillable. So it doesn't matter what the price is.

[Liz Thomas]

As you.

[Alex Steele]

Yeah, okay, but if you're taking a look at the longer term. So where do I want to go? If we're looking at a curve that's still not 90, what area of the world now looks more attractive to go build that? It's still telling you that there is a definite supply need. There is nothing that's showing any kind of demand destruction at all. I think that that conversation is dead. It's above all energy. Where that supply goes and what form of energy that supply is changes. But globally all those forms are needed.

[Liz Thomas]

So the demand has not changed. Do you think that it will if everything lasts, the disruption lasts even longer or. No, there's no real concern about demand destruction. It's just that we're going to have to deal with it.

[Alex Steele]

I mean, I know what you're saying. I mean, first of all, I wish I knew the right answer to that. I think it's a couple fold. One, I think there will be demand destruction because the product won't be there. Like if you cannot get your oil to make a product, then that product is no longer there. So if you want something that's similar, you're going to have to Find it. If you need gas to turn on your lights and you literally cannot get that cargo, you need to find something else. Yeah, will that something else? I use that quotes be something that's sustainable or just a quick option?

[Liz Thomas]

Band aid.

[Alex Steele]

A band aid. I mean, prices rebalance stuff. So at some point when we get a lot, there's a ton of LNG export capacity coming online in the us so let's say five years from now, we get that ton of capacity coming on, then there's a supply for it, then all of a sudden that becomes cheaper than coal and then you switch back. So it's maybe a different way of looking at it is now all forms of energy, whether you're looking at hydro or solar or wind or oil or gas, are all now interconnected in a very advanced way, or maybe they become a little bit more price sensitive to each other and now you have both. Like this goes back to the AI data center conversation. You know, you have natural gas and then you got solar. Maybe it's a pairing of things to make your facilities more resilient. The question then becomes, how expensive is that? So does that increase the cost for everything? Now if you're looking at some kind of redundancy and security, like remember that customer that I mentioned earlier who's looking for gas no matter what the cost? They're paying no matter what the cost. So does that lead to a different financial profile? Now when we're looking at energy costs,

[Liz Thomas]

it gets passed through differently. Okay, let's take this to a practical level real quick. I'm going to ask a really dumb question or maybe like a dumb concept in the sense of when there's a war, and this is just in general, when there's a war or when there's a supply shock out of the Middle east, something like the Strait of Hormuz is closed, or maybe OPEC decides they're not going to produce as many barrels. Whatever's going on, how long does it take? I'm asking this because I kind of know the answer, but I want you to explain this to us.

[Alex Steele]

Oh God, she's going to test me now.

[Liz Thomas]

Well, how long does it take? Like the strait opens, right? It's not as if suddenly oil starts flowing to everybody. It takes a while for that barrel of oil to then be put on a tanker and then shipped through wherever it needs to ship through to arrive in China. So countries have been drawing on their reserves because the supply shock has lasted. But even if there is de escalation, even when everything reopens, it takes what, a month?

[Alex Steele]

Oh, God.

[Liz Thomas]

Sometimes for that one barrel or however many barrels they need to go refill not only their reserves, but have the demand, fill the demand. Okay, so how long?

[Alex Steele]

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on where and how you're shipping, but we're talking months and months and months and months just for the oil to

[Liz Thomas]

get from the Middle east to wherever it needs to go.

[Alex Steele]

So a couple of distinctions. We have seen some oil go through to customers that Iran wanted it to get through to China, for example. Right. China is a huge.

[Liz Thomas]

But not all of what they want.

[Alex Steele]

Not all of what they want, but some has been trickling through. Right. Because Iran makes it such. So when you first off, when you say open, does open mean that Iran still somewhat controls what goes through, which then changes where that's going. So their customers are going to get it much faster than say Europe.

[Liz Thomas]

Okay.

[Alex Steele]

Right. So the oil and gas coming out is going to go to like an India and a China faster than it's going to go to Europe. Don't know about Bangladesh, for example. Okay, so that's one. Right. So there's a. Then there's a different kind of flow. And that's in a good case scenario, it feels right, stuff flows through. But maybe Iran has a little bit of say in what does. That's like a positive from where we are now.

[Liz Thomas]

Right, Right.

[Alex Steele]

Then it also depends on what the contracts are, like who's up in line first. Right. In terms to get their oil and gas. And we also have seen some oil, a lot actually for Saudi Arabia go out of the pipeline and then shipped. Right. So there has been other avenues for oil to get out. For example, it costs more and it's more expensive and it goes different directions and all that kind of stuff. And then it depends on how much inventory you had, like how do you refill it. And then it depends on are your refineries shutting down. So China told all its refineries to like go, go, go. And we just heard that China's private refiners are asking to cut their processing rates because they don't have the oil. So then what does that mean? Does that delay if they get the oil? Does it take a little while to like get up to speed? These aren't just buttons that you push.

[Liz Thomas]

Right.

[Alex Steele]

Is the equipment okay? Does it need to be checked? Like there are all these little layers of processes that. That matter.

[Liz Thomas]

Right.

[Alex Steele]

That's in reality paper market. I don't know. I mean you get like, we're open here.

[Liz Thomas]

Right.

[Alex Steele]

The price is going to drop 15 bucks.

[Liz Thomas]

Like the market will respond. But it's in reality, it's. That's the piece that I wanted to cover is that it's not as if suddenly everybody has all the oil that they needed and they've been missing for couple of months. It takes a while. And that's why there are these knock on effects. And that when we worry about inflation, of course energy prices are going to go up, but it really only makes up, you know, 2 or 3% of inflation as we talk about it. And then of course transportation is going to go up like airfare, but that.

[Alex Steele]

Oh my God, airfare.

[Liz Thomas]

Yeah, that only makes up another 2 or 3%. So really, is this going to drive inflation? Well, but that's not all it affects because you've got all these downstream effects. Right. To make a sweater, you've got, you need, you need energy to make the sweater. You need energy to send the sweater from. I mean, I'm not going to go through all of this, but talk about those downstream effects to stuff that consumers hear, can actually touch, feel and see.

[Alex Steele]

So there is oil in your sweater? Yeah, like there's part of like a, like a chemical that comes from oil that's in your sweater.

[Liz Thomas]

Okay.

[Alex Steele]

I was going to say when you said housing's not really affected, I was going to be like, oh, but where do you get the cement?

[Liz Thomas]

Right. Yeah. Conventional wisdom would be like, well, that's not part of this. So tell it. Educate us on how it all is affected.

[Alex Steele]

So for oil in particular, I mean, oil's in every single thing that we use and touch all over the place. And as you mentioned, there's definitely many knockoff derivatives. So cement, definitely. You need power to power the refiner to make cement. Right. So is there like oil in the actual cement? I have no idea. But I know that if you're making cement, you need a heck of a ton of power to do that. And power comes from gas, it comes from oil. Maybe it comes from something else. Like it comes from different forms. Right. And that's a big problem. And what we saw too. Like think about plastic, okay? Oils and plastic refiners make plastic. That is an input. Imagine if you didn't have plastic. Like 90% of the things that we eat are probably plastic at the end of the day. Right.

[Liz Thomas]

The biggest terrifying.

[Alex Steele]

Which is disgusting. And that's a whole different podcast. But I just was reading an article about that this morning. But then the other big part is fertilizer.

[Liz Thomas]

Yep.

[Alex Steele]

Right. So you need energy to make fertilizer then you don't have the fertilizer, then you can't grow stuff. So literally that impacts food supply. The most tangible way to see it obviously are gasoline prices. But that's just the tip of an iceberg. I mean, now what we did see though is with COVID there are lots of levers that companies can pull, so companies might eat some of the costs so their margins go down. So if you're a stock investor, that hurts you, but then maybe if you're a human, it doesn't really bother you because the prices are staying the same. Same thing for construction costs. So there's other ways to offset that if the companies choose to do so. That's an if. I don't know. You tell me.

[Liz Thomas]

So where, where does this leave inflation? Is it, is it going to be a short term rise? Do we see a couple months of bad inflation prints and then it levels out? If, if everything goes back to normal

[Alex Steele]

short term, I have absolutely no idea. I'm more concerned with structural longer term inflation from many different directions. And that comes from diversifying your energy supply. Where you're getting it, how you're getting it, how you're securing it. Because that's all going to cost more. To hearken back to the beginning. If I'm going to secure that energy, no matter what, I have to pay more to do it. And at some point that's going to feed through to something, right? I mean it's going to trickle down to some respects to the consumer. And just take a look at even with AI, right? And the move we've seen electricity prices doesn't even take into account AI data centers, it's just data centers that were already there and that are increasing. So we haven't even begun to scratch that part of the conversation. And then imagine if you're building something and you want to secure that, even if you're going to connect to the grid later, where do you secure it? Where is it? Where's it coming from? Is it coming from China? Is it coming from South Carolina? Probably not. Like it's coming from somewhere. Which is why you've seen the government, for example, go all in on the Defense Production act, which I've been talking to people and they are like overjoyed and thrilled. There is a lot of money coming out of this administration to do these things, to build supply chains, to build stuff, to help build infrastructure. Whether or not it gets distributed and actually you can get it done is a different question. But there's both administrations in different ways have Put a lot of money towards this.

[Liz Thomas]

So this is much like the onshoring theme. Yep. Where we would talk about on shoring and some people might talk about it from a company perspective and say, well, they're going to benefit from onshoring. And it's like, well, yeah, but it's. Onshoring is going to take 10 to 15 years, build out the manufacturing facilities. You're not going to see that benefit in the next 12 months. When you're talking about forward 12 month earnings. Right. So this whole rejiggering of energy supply happens over a longer period of time. Maybe that drives inflation. Okay, that makes sense to me. I think in the short term we do see a pop. We do see a pop in inflation and partially because if you think back to what happened in 2022 when we hit the high, the most recent high in inflation, 9.1% CPI, that was in June of 22. Companies could excuse passing it through at that point because it was Covid related. We all understood why it was happening. There was so much demand and then services took off again. Everybody want, you know, this revenge spending so consumers understood why it was happening. I don't think everybody will understand. So I don't think companies will have as much leeway to do that. So I think we see the pop in inflation, but consumers are going to be more price sensitive about it. So then later in the year you might see this pause or maybe a soft patch in growth because people pull back, they're already feeling stretched. And then add on top of that, you know, I think people start to just pull back and say, well then I'm just not going to spend right now.

[Alex Steele]

And I know that we used to talk a lot about the revenge spending that you brought up and like, well, travel's immune, Right. Because everyone wants to get out there. But airline tickets are so expensive. I mean you're seeing because in part they just don't have the jet fuel. So if you don't have the jet fuel, you can't run a flight. So then you're cutting capacity which then increases the prices. So that's number one. And then number two, didn't I see that like hotels or something for the World cup or like not selling or like Airbnb was just not selling or something like that. Like those are flags to me too. The beginning of a softening in that arena. Is it off a cliff? Of course not. But also we don't have the stimulus checks that we had during COVID either. Now of course the tax reform will be Helping certain individuals and certain cohorts of financial world get more money.

[Liz Thomas]

Sure, but that's a one time thing right now.

[Alex Steele]

And also the more money you have, the more apt you are to save it. That's the thing, right?

[Liz Thomas]

Especially if they're scared. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How does Venezuela fit into all of this? That's like a figment of our imagination.

[Alex Steele]

Now there is definitely a humongous opportunity to do just what some say Canada, US and South America to work together in some legal way to produce a lot of energy for the rest of the world. So someone I was speaking to recently said that basically the US is now a new opec. You have some Gulf countries that are going to align themselves with OPEC in a particular way and you have the power South America and Canada. And this is a new OPEC now that has much more muscles to flex when it comes to energy dominance. It's not just US oil, it's not just US gas. It's a whole host of stuff that could be quite powerful and that could be completely game changing. And it's game changing for two reasons. One, Argentina. So Huaca Muerta is the shale deposit and it has a lot of shale oil deposit that's been developed by Argentinian companies forever. Even small, more nimble ones who can work with shale technology. However, now we're seeing actual shale companies, not just like Chevron, but actual shale companies like Continental go in there and bring their wildcatter ideas. So what that means is you think really fast on your feet, you try different things, you throw spaghetti at the wall and see what works. You bring in your technology, your expertise and your joint ventures that you worked on here in the US over there. That's very different than what we've seen in the past and could be very significant. And Venezuela is something really similar. So what I'm confused about is two things. One, if President Trump was not in office, how many companies would realistically be going into Venezuela? I don't have a good answer for that. Chevron is obviously spending its profits in Venezuela on Venezuela and they're looking for ways to expand and work on operations. I know there are other companies that are very interested in getting in, into certain blocks into Venezuela and are actively, actively looking at it. They just want to make sure everything's done by the law in every single way. You want to dot your t's 100 times, dot your I's and cross your t's 100 times. Because if a different administration comes in and has different feelings, you want to make sure you're not getting called up to Capitol Hill for doing something wrong. But the Export Import bank is working very hard at removing some of the barriers to getting US money into Venezuela. And that could literally be a huge game changer for sure. Like that's a legit thing. It also has heavy oil, which everyone really, really wants. Heavy oil is really valuable because you can use it to make lots of different products. Light oil can only make certain products. So heavy oil is really valuable. We have refiners that process that say in the US and that can make up some of the Middle Eastern oil as well.

[Liz Thomas]

Well, okay, okay, let's pivot to AI. Okay, you mentioned it briefly already, but help us understand how AI folds into all of this. We, we already hear about the energy demand. We know that utilities stocks have started to trade almost as an AI beneficiary. What does this look like right now? And then maybe what does it look like over the next five years?

[Alex Steele]

What confuses me the most actually is a question for you. Because I don't understand why tech stocks are not trading like an energy stock yet. Because now they are capital intensive, shovel in the ground companies building data centers. They've never been that before. And they're not valued like that. I mean, you take a look comparing that to like an energy company, the valuations are really strange and super off. And I'm wondering when that starts to re rate because that's going to have the trickle effect into how much money they are able and allowed to buy shareholders to spend again.

[Liz Thomas]

Well, I think, I think some of the scrutiny on how much tech companies are spending is already happening, for example. Right? It's already happening. Investors have gotten smarter about, okay, all this capital is being deployed. You continue to raise CapEx guidance. Even this year, CapEx guidance has gone up crazy. Hundreds of billions of dollars. It's bananas what's happening out there. So that scrutiny I think is already happening right now. I think tech is in a phase where they have to keep going on that SPE spending spree in order to remain relevant and in order to keep up with what every other tech company is doing. So that's not going to stop, I don't think anytime soon until there's a reason for it to break. I also don't think they'll get valued as energy companies anytime soon.

[Alex Steele]

I agree with you.

[Liz Thomas]

Because looking at what's driving the economy, when people think about what's driving the economy right now, AI is at the top of that food chain. Communications may be right underneath it and then some of the consumer discretionary because Amazon gets wrapped up in there. But at the top of the food chain is AI. And then what is our opportunity going forward as an economy? It's that AI increases productivity so that we can be more profitable as an economy. Right. And AI is an innovation. It's a new technology. It's so exciting. It's maybe so exciting that it's scary.

[Alex Steele]

And there's so much demand for those

[Liz Thomas]

chips and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. I remember when it all started, it was like, is this real?

[Alex Steele]

Yeah, I remember that.

[Liz Thomas]

Real. Is this really a thing? Let's just wait and see if it's real now. It's real and it's. It's become a bubble of sorts in the sense of it's driving everything that we think about. From an optimism standpoint, I think it will continue to be looked at as an innovation and as something that is going to make other things obsolete. I don't think it makes energy obsolete, but in order for that innovation to keep going at the pace it's going, it needs energy. So energy is an input into the technology that the market is going to value it as.

[Alex Steele]

I also love how, like, the story that I probably said, like June 30th on Bloomberg still holds. Right.

[Liz Thomas]

Like driven by tech 25.

[Alex Steele]

Yeah, like driven by tech. Like, that's a story that's been out there forever. It is surprising how much that still holds. So you don't win on tech if you don't have energy access, which I think that we all know now.

[Liz Thomas]

Yeah.

[Alex Steele]

What nobody knows is what that actually looks like. What we have seen, though, are energy companies and, or independent power producers and big tech companies get really creative in how they wind up doing deals. So Excel and Google did this really fascinating deal where Google basically is paying for upgrades to the transmission lines for the grid. It was a very fast, creative way of making power to Google now and not hurting the consumer. It took a year to get to which for Google was so slow and horrifying. And then for, you know, Excel is insanely fast as a utility. To move that fast is crazy. So we're seeing companies that are very flexible that want to move very fast. Regulated utilities are in a different kind of place. They have different obligations, they have different shareholder requirements, they have rate cases piling up like crazy so they can't move as fast. Which is why you're seeing tech companies go to really different unique models, behind the meter solutions, et cetera. Usually what you hear is you get gas and solar now and then you get something like geothermal and nuclear later. But honestly, the jury is still out on a lot of those things. To be able to make it cost competitive and scalable, there's still a lot of question marks.

[Liz Thomas]

Well, cost competitive is one thing, but is there even going to be enough energy available to keep this AI buildup moving? Does it, does it at some point constrain?

[Alex Steele]

No. Yes, 100%.

[Liz Thomas]

Hypothetically, let's say we didn't have any limits on energy. We had all the energy we needed for everybody and it was cost effective and yay, then does the AI run last another decade? We can keep building.

[Alex Steele]

How long does that bubble actually go for?

[Liz Thomas]

Maybe the bubble ends up having to stop growing because we just don't have the energy to keep moving it forward and that, that's how it ends. Which isn't. I don't think that's on people's radar as, oh, that's going to be what is the problem?

[Alex Steele]

So funnily enough, this goes back to Iran too, is that if you get chips, say to make the chips, you use oil as an input to make these chips through product. Right. So if there's a shortage of that, you actually can't get the chips. So that's going to potentially slow some build out. If you had all the energy in the world, could you keep building? Yes. I guarantee you though, you don't have the infrastructure to do that. So the infrastructure is a humongous part of it. And then the other part is actually the energy. Do we have enough resources? Sure. We got sun, you got wind. Geothermal just need hot rock. We got ton of that and oil and gas. Just, you keep drilling deeper and longer and you're going to get stuff again. That's just a matter of price. It's an infrastructure thing. Thing. So that's why. So for geothermal, here's the big question mark. Geothermal in theory is awesome in a really basic way of looking at it. You drill down one, one pipe, you send cold water down, it gets heated up and then it comes out of another pipe that you've drilled that's super hot, and then you get the steam and that creates the energy. For all you geothermal nerds out there, I appreciate there's like tons of different ways of looking at this, but let's just keep it real high level. Okay? So that's one part and it makes sense. It could work great. Cool. What about the rock? So how hot does that rock have to be? So if it has to be really Hot. You're constrained as to where you're building it. And I had someone tell me, look, I'm not going to go to Utah to build my data center next year geothermal, because that's where the rock is. That's not good for me. I can't get distribution. Inference isn't going to work for me over there. I need it in the Northeast. So unless you can get me geothermal in the Northeast, I don't care about geothermal. Totally fair point. Now there's tons of technology out there that's like, well, we're going to make it able to work in any rock ever, and we can get it super hot wherever, and our cool new technology is going to fix it. Great. That's awesome. But it has to do that for us to be able to move that to the Northeast. So you can have your data center in Virginia where you want it to use it. Number one, nuclear is somewhat the same way. Not in my backyard. It's is humongous for so many different forms of energy for anybody who isn't familiar, but particularly when it comes to nuclear. Okay, now everyone's gonna say that they're super safe and everything's great, and that all may be true. It's just another hurdle to operate under. They're also huge. Where you need the data center may not be where you can put these forms of energy. So then you're relying on other kinds of things that still require maybe a pipe in the ground or a transmission line somewhere or the ability to connect to the grid to get get power from somewhere else. And that part's a disaster. I mean, if we get permitting reform. Amazing. That would be fantastic. I was reading something today that someone put a 25% likelihood on that and now is the best time to get per reform done. Like, there is bipartisan support to some extent. Yeah, but that's a whole.

[Liz Thomas]

Even that only gets us to 25%.

[Alex Steele]

Yeah.

[Liz Thomas]

Okay. Okay, Now I want to pivot to renewables just for a minute. It and maybe this is indicative of why renewables have not been a good investing solution. Because I've waited till the end of the podcast to talk about this and I'm like, we're going to get it done really fast. It's an afterthought. It's not an afterthought, but in reality it has become one. When this all started, it was like, clean energy is the wave of the future. We have to do it this way. Everybody's going to take it on. There's going to be Electric vehicles, and there are. And that has grown a lot. But from an investment standpoint point, it hasn't really produced the returns that I think people hoped. Especially given that it seems like a necessity. It seems like this has to happen. The demand is, is a sure thing. So then why hasn't it produced that? So let's start with that. Why hasn't it produced the investment returns that everybody had hoped?

[Alex Steele]

Supply, now supply chain issues was a big one. That's really what helped tank offshore wind about four years ago, is that the builders and the developers were taking on all the commodity risk. And then Covid happened and the supply chain tanked out and that just messed up everyone's financial models. And you already enter into these agreements, like power purchase agreements before you're really building, because you need the power purchase agreement to go get your loan from the bank. To some extent, maybe they call something different for wind, but I know for natural gas, that's what they're called. So if you don't have it, you can't get the money. But then to get the money, you got to get the contract and then the supply chain messes with with you. Same thing could be said now. So it's definitely a supply chain issue for sure, particularly solar when it comes to China. But then the other point, are subsidies? Sensitive subject. So there is a school of thought that says new, all forms of energy should have subsidies. And then someone's going to say, okay, but you know what, you've been in Iran for 10 years, so if you still need a subsidy, you're not a real business. And then someone else would say, what, are you kidding me? Oil and gas companies, they still get subsidies. They're just called something different. They're called tax breaks. They're called depreciation tax, something, I don't know, some word that I forgot because I'm no longer on Bloomberg tv, but. And then the other side would be like, yeah, but look at the service we're providing. And then how many jobs? And then solar's like, yeah, but look at what we do. So it goes back and forth. We need it. Yeah, like we need solar, we need wind. That's. You need those things, right? Does the US need them? Certain states probably, yeah. Like there are successful solar developers out there that are continuing to add gigawatt watts to communities because of the way that they structure their finances and their business models and their community outreach. Do we need offshore wind? I don't know. That's always going to be really, really expensive in part because you Got to get the transmission line under the water. And that just seems really hard. But if you want to build it, why shouldn't you be able to build it? I think is the general wisdom. There's other places in the world where having solar makes complete sense. And maybe you're closer to like, why, why isn't India covered in solar? They have a relationship with China. They're close to China. You get your stuff, you put it up there, you rock and roll.

[Liz Thomas]

Yeah.

[Alex Steele]

Same thing with areas in Africa. Distribution and transmission is still going to be an issue though, no matter where you are. Permitting reform here in the US but also say you look in Africa and there are different countries that use different forms of energy, but they don't share their energy because they're different countries.

[Liz Thomas]

Right, right.

[Alex Steele]

So that makes it really, really difficult to manage all that kind of risk. And same thing for Europe as well. I think the difference is it has to be price competitive and that's where the intermittency becomes the issue. So you can look at it on a one to one basis and say, oh, it's cheaper than gas. When you factor in maybe Solar is working 50% of the time and wind is working 40% of the time. I'm completely making these numbers up. And then you do apples to apples. The comparisons are not the same. Gas is still very, very cheap. But why can't you have both battery storage? If those costs can come down, that's a really good solution to help solar become more consistently cost competitive. The intermittency is a problem, but it doesn't mean that you toss out the baby in the bathwater. Like you can have intermittency and you can have gas. Right. Like, that's why I was mentioning that potentially using gas with solar is a great solution for data centers. I think at the end of the day, data centers want to be first. They have to be first. They lose so much money if they're not first. But they also, they know they need to eventually be clean too. Yeah, but it's like how much money did. How much do they want to delay their startup factory running, data center running to be clean? Not, I think they'd prioritize speed. Right. But like eventually they're going to need that.

[Liz Thomas]

Yeah. What are you most excited about in the energy market for the next five to ten years?

[Alex Steele]

Okay. Well, I'm really excited to see what happens with Fervo's ipo. Okay. That will be a really good indicator for investor appetite for geothermal, which will inform a lot of other Companies and what they're going to do with capital raising and stuff. I'm really excited to see how fast some of those companies can grow, whether you're nuclear fission, fusion, smrs, geothermal, other kinds of technology. Because there's a big gap between VC investors and infrastructure investors. So VC wants super sexy tech risk and infrastructure wants super boring no tech risk. And there's a huge gap where there's something's not being funded. So can we get some of those companies over hurdle line? Could be really, really cool. If that happens and that capital starts to flow, we can really unlock and unguk some of this, which would be very exciting. The other excitement that I have is what is going to happen with bp. So BP has a new CEO and what happens with that strategic company is going to be fascinating. What I mean by that is can they get it together and can they stand on their own two feet? Or is this going to become some kind of consolidation story, which has been the story for like a decade, but is this time actually different? And then the massive consolidation that we're still going to see in the E and P space. So the exploration and production space within the US you just can't compete if you're small and everyone's scaling up and there's going to be five super juicy independents and then you have the big two big five international oil companies. What happened to the smaller guys? What that looks like and what that race looks like and what basin diversification we're going to see for nerds like me is super fun.

[Liz Thomas]

Yeah. Okay. What concerns you the most?

[Alex Steele]

Permitting, not getting stuff done and things getting gummed up in dc, whatever that looks like. Like I mentioned, I was joking around with that LNG export person and I was like, you're gonna go and get called up on in D.C. and I really hope that doesn't happen because we all have to kind of like keep going.

[Liz Thomas]

Yeah, right.

[Alex Steele]

For everybody. Like, we need to get pipe in the ground to make sure that Appalachian Gas gets to data centers and to households and that you're gonna have Haynesville Gas get to the Gulf coast to export it. Like we need all of that it. I'm just hoping that it doesn't get gummed up. And then I'm excited to see what happens with them. I'm not excited just to see how the Iran situation evolves and the reality versus the narrative.

[Liz Thomas]

Well, thank you. What a wealth of knowledge. I think our, our listeners, our viewers will love this. They will have learned a lot. I think there are a lot of questions out there since the beginning of the year about what has happened in energy markets, why everybody cares so much, how it affects everything else else. And you have helped shed some light on that.

[Alex Steele]

Oh, I'm so happy. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

[Liz Thomas]

Energy is a huge topic of conversation that none of us saw coming when 2026 began. So this episode has a ton of takeaways and a ton of things that we need to keep in mind. Some of my favorites and some of the things that I think are the most important for investors to remember. First and foremost, the repercussions of the war and of the supply shock are going to have impact for decades. Years for sure, maybe decades. And that's happening because long term, it's changing the way that companies have to think about how they diversify and prepare for the potential risks going forward. So there's going to be a lot of shifting around from a company level and even from a regional and country level.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

So.

[Liz Thomas]

And remember that oil and energy is in everything. It's not that we think about an oil shock and just worry about gas prices. We have to think about an oil shock, especially if it's long lasting. And think about the clothes we wear, think about the food we eat, think about agriculture, housing, everything it is in everything we do, everything we consume. And there are trickle down effects that we haven't even seen yet that we're likely to learn more about later this year. Another thing that I think is important for investors to remember is that the supply and demand dynamic is changing. I mentioned in the podcast that for a long time it was all about whether there was enough supply to satisfy demand and that's what rose or made prices fall. That's not the case anymore. And the dynamics are changing in the industry. So it's been a lot more difficult as an energy investor to figure out how prices are actually going to affect those investments. So that's something that we all need to stay tuned on. And then lastly for AI, this is a topic that is not going anywhere anytime soon. But Alex's take is that there just isn't enough energy for the AI buildout right now. And even in a hypothetical world where there was all the energy that we wanted or needed, we don't have the infrastructure to support it. So that's another open question in the coming years about will there be enough energy generated to continue this AI buildout? And if there isn't, and if we don't have the infrastructure to support it, it what does that mean for the AI trade? Another open question that we all have to watch. Thank you for listening or watching. This was a fascinating episode. I think she did a wonderful job of giving us all of the really important points on this trade and on this topic, and we look forward to bringing you the next episode very soon. For more from me, read my weekly column in SoFi's newsletter on the money and on the SoFi website, or follow me on X at Liz Thomas Strap. Follow the Important Part wherever you get your podcasts. The Important Part is produced by SoFi in partnership with Sony Podcasts Investments are

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

not FDIC insured, are not bank guaranteed, and may lose value. Elizabeth Thomas is a registered representative of SoFi securities and a registered investment advisor with SoFi Wealth. This podcast is brought to you by SoFi Invest, which is a trade name used by SoFi Wealth LLC and SoFi Securities LLC. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Investing involves risk.