Buy Energy Stocks As The Ukraine War Fuels Inflation

Russia appears to be winning its war with the West, and the implications are profoundly negative for investors.

The Central Bank of Russia cut its key lending rate Friday by 150 basis points. It was the fourth rate cut since February, when the war in Ukraine began. CRB officials say Russian inflation is slowing.

Inflation in the West is soaring. Investors should buy energy stocks.

Russia’s economic demise was supposed to be a done deal. Shuttering western storefronts in Moscow, reeling-in globetrotting oligarchs, and waves of unprecedented global sanctions were supposed to suffocate the economy from the inside. Russia was supposed to self-destruct and fall into the dustbin of economic modernity. It didn’t work out that way.

Today interest rates inside Russia are back to pre-invasion levels. The rubble is the strongest fiat currency in the world versus the U.S. dollar, up 16% in 2022. Once empty store shelves have been restocked. More importantly, President Vladimir Putin as popular as ever with Russians, according to a report at Bloomberg.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though.

Year-to-date, a tracker at Yale University highlights that almost 1,000 Western companies have now pulled out of the Russian economy. Microsoft
MSFT
(MSFT) announced on Friday that it would lay off all of its 400 workers, and that new business in the country would be completely discontinued.

The corporate world runs on Microsoft software both on the desktop, and in its Azure intelligent cloud. The inability to send and receive Word and Excel files is likely to be a big problem for Russian firms trying to compete on a world stage.

Also, inflation in Russia is still running at a 17.1% annualized clip, the highest since 2002.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the CRB is cognizant that the Russian economy still faces high hurdles. Diminished investment from the West, and rising prices domestically will keep economic growth rates negative for the remainder of 2022, and next year.

Unfortunately for investors in the West, none of this will be enough to change the way Putin prosecutes the tragic, pointless war in Ukraine, a region that produces 25% of the world’s grain harvest. He’s being emboldened by relative stability on the home front, and Western governments that refuse to sanction Russian oil. Their inaction is putting upward pressure on agricultural commodities and energy prices as speculators bet the war will last well beyond the summer.

At the other end of the spectrum the Federal Reserve is stuck. The US central bank is fighting a war on inflation that is largely out of its control.

The S&P 500 index plummeted 2.9% on Friday following a stronger-than-expected report on inflation at the consumer level. The Consumer Price Index in May surged 8.5% on an annualized basis, the highest reading since 1981.

Investors fear the Fed will push short term interest rates aggressively higher to squash economic growth and kill demand.

It’s a devilish economic twist: Russia starts a horrific war in Ukraine, and ends up sabotaging Western economies all over the world.

There will be winners, though.

While energy stocks were lower on Friday with the rest of the market, these shares have been big winners in 2022.

The Energy Select Sector SPDR (XLE
XLE
) is a non-diversified exchanged traded fund. It tracks the biggest oil, gas, consumable fuels and energy equipment businesses within the S&P 500. The ETF has a 2.5% dividend yield, and has rallied 59.8% year-to-date.

The ETF is due for a minor pullback, yet the longer-term trend for energy is strongly positive. Investors should take advantage of near-term weakness. It is only a matter of time before shares resume their trek to new highs.

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