The best way to profit from the oil shock

Oil shocks are bad news - they are almost invariably followed by a global recession. And a further rise in the price of oil will deal the West's fragile economies another serious blow. But things are not completely hopeless, says John Stepek. There is a bright side for investors.

The turmoil in the Middle East is turning out to be oddly like the eurozone crisis.

Markets don't quite know what to do with themselves. A day goes by without any major developments, some decent economic news comes out of the US, and so stocks drift higher. But then news of protests breaks out elsewhere, the oil price jumps, and everyone panics again.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.