Getty Images

Boring is beautiful

The flashiest, best performing sector this year is... utilities?

Utilities stocks are up 27% in 2024, even better than tech

9/17/24 9:48AM

The stock market story of the year has been all about artificial intelligence (or maybe the Fed, if you’re more of a “zoom out” person).

But, despite Nvidia’s inexorable rise and the ongoing dominance of the Magnificent 7, it’s good old fashioned utility stocks — think electricity, water, and gas companies — that are leading the market this year, up more than 27%. That’s better than the Information Technology (+26%) or Communication Services (+25%) sectors.

Utilities stocks outperforming — Sherwood News

So, why are utility stocks soaring?

We never know exactly why any stock is doing anything, but in this case the market seems to be seeking exposure to utilities for two reasons. Firstly, after years of tighter monetary policy, we’re close to getting a cut in interest rates, lowering the borrowing costs for utility companies, as well as making their high dividend yields relatively more attractive to income-seeking investors.

The second reason is more fundamental. Many utilities stocks are indirectly exposed to AI (and you thought this story was about something else), by powering the ever-growing demand for data centers.

In fact, the best performing stock in the Utilities sector of the S&P 500 is a little-known company called Vistra Corp., which only joined the index in May, and has soared more than 130% this year. The second-best performing is Constellation Energy Corp. (+71%), which is America’s largest owner and operator of nuclear power plants.

Unsurprisingly, the management of these companies are talking up the opportunity:

The simple fact is that data centers are coming and they're essential to America's national security and economic competitiveness. We've heard this from a variety of policymakers, a number of nations, including China, are vying for AI supremacy. And it's absolutely critical that the US not fall behind. Time is of the essence. We simply cannot wait years for the data centers that are going to bring transformations. They're going to bring transformations in medicines, bringing new cures to diseases and treatments that research alone cannot do.
Joseph Dominguez — Chief Executive Officer, Constellation Energy Corp [August 6th, 2024]

Altogether, the words “data center” were mentioned 35 times on Constellation Energy’s Q2 earnings call. The count for the same quarter last year? Zero mentions.

Luke Kawa25m

Poet Technologies surges as CFO confirms purchase order from Marvell, calls short sellers “maggots”

Shares of POET Technologies are continuing their parabolic surge after CFO Thomas Mika confirmed to StockTwits that the company would be booking revenues from custom chip and networking specialist Marvell Technology.

“We’re a supplier to Marvell now that they’ve acquired Celestial AI who has been a customer of ours for a couple of years,” he said. “And what we supply to Celestial AI are light sources, high-bandwidth, multi-frequency, high-power light sources that light up the photonic fabric that Celestial AI talks about as being the communication device between GPUs and one GPU and another GPU, a GPU and a memory device.”

Mika also said “I hate shorts” when asked about Wolfpack Research’s bet against the company, and said that short sellers were “maggots.” Wolfpack alleged that Poet’s US-based investors would be exposed to an “IRS tax nightmare.”

Personally, this explanation strikes me as pretty thin gruel. We’ve known since early December that Marvell was buying Celestial AI, and that Celestial AI is a Poet customer. Indeed, the stock got to surge when the deal was announced for that very reason! I can confirm that the sky is blue, I don’t know if that should be considered a catalyst to bid up the atmosphere.

On the other hand, you could do worse for a thesis these days than, “Hey, everything in the AI infrastructure supply chain seems to have mooned at one point or another recently, maybe let’s look for some names that mooned in 2025 that haven’t had their time in the sun in 2026!”

Poet’s in the connectivity space, which has been on fire in 2026. But shares had been down year-to-date before more than doubling over the past nine sessions.

The company’s rally once again includes massively bullish options action:

On a related note, Navitas Semiconductor is up double digits today and nearing its closing high from October, the latest in a series of current conditions we’re flagging as being eerily reminiscent of the market backdrop six months ago. Navitas is up more than 80% over the past nine sessions.

Luke Kawa

4 charts that show the speculative boom is back on

We’re so back.

BRITAIN-LONDON-FIREWORKS-NEW YEAR-CELEBRATION

The Future of the AI boom is coming into view

GE Vernova and Vertiv are giving us a glimpse into the future of the AI boom

GEV’s backlogs are bursting at the seams. One analyst told us he thinks that by the end of this year, GEV could be completely sold out of production capacity for heavy-duty turbines until 2029 or 2030.

Matt Phillips4h

Max Knoblauch4h

Low-cost airlines plunge on report Trump administration is close to $500 million rescue deal for Spirit

Low-budget US airlines are sinking on Wednesday morning following a Wall Street Journal report that the Trump administration is close to making a rescue deal for Spirit Airlines, which is said to be nearing liquidation amid high fuel costs.

Shares of Frontier, Allegiant, JetBlue, and Southwest Airlines all dropped notably.

Per the WSJ, the US government could soon loan Spirit up to $500 million in return for warrants to take a sizable stake in the airline, which has filed for bankruptcy twice since late 2024. Those warrants could give the US government the ability to purchase as much as 90% ownership of Spirit, Bloomberg reports. The carrier has made efforts to emerge from its latest bankruptcy, filed in August, but fuel costs amid the war in Iran have upset the math.

On Tuesday, President Trump told CNBC he would “love somebody to buy Spirit.”

Exclusive | Trump Administration Nearing Rescue Deal for Spirit Airlines

On Tuesday, President Trump told CNBC he would “love somebody to buy Spirit.”

Max Knoblauch7h

Boeing reports better-than-expected Q1 earnings, revenue

Plane maker Boeing reported its first-quarter earnings before the market opened on Wednesday. Its shares climbed more than 3% in premarket trading.

For Q1, Boeing reported:

An adjusted loss of $0.20 per share, compared to the loss of $0.68 per share expected by Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet.
Revenue of $22.22 billion, compared to estimates of $21.85 billion.

Boeing reported -$1.45 billion in free cash flow in Q1, compared to the -$2.34 billion expected by Wall Street. Prior to Wednesday, Boeing had reported two consecutive quarters of positive FCF following six straight quarters of negative results. The company is still guiding for full-year FCF of between $1 billion and $3 billion.

Earlier this month, Boeing announced it had delivered 143 commercial jets in Q1, up 10% from the same period last year and ahead of rival Airbus, which delivered 114. This was Boeing’s first time outdelivering Airbus since 2018.