Oil shares have never been this cheap – but will they just get even cheaper?

The oil sector is staggeringly cheap. But oil is still one of the most important commodities in the world. John Stepek looks at where energy stocks might go from here.

Oil workers © Greg Smith/Corbis via Getty Images
Oil production is falling
(Image credit: © Greg Smith/Corbis via Getty Images)

It’s only been about a week since I last wrote about oil. But I’m finding it fascinating at the moment. Like most value-orientated investors, I just can’t resist constantly returning to a sector that relentlessly gets cheaper and cheaper.

Of course, as many value investors have learned to their cost in the last decade or so, things that are cheap can just carry on that way until they’ve gone all the way to zero (or below, in some cases).

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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.