| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What he said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVX | Chevron | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Owned as the large-cap producer leg of "the whole spectrum" — "on the producing side, we own big producers like Chevron." Energy names generally sit at seven-to-eight times earnings with good dividends while "a lot of people just don't want to buy fossil fuel." | 5:54 |
| MTDR | Matador Resources | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The mid-cap producer he owns alongside Chevron — "we own Matador on the midsize." Held for the earnings look over the next six-to-eight quarters, not as a high-beta bet on the oil price. | 5:54 |
| AR | Antero Resources | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Owned as natural-gas exposure — "we own natural gas companies like Antero, Apache or APA." Natural gas is the one critical resource where he says the US is not behind the eight ball. | 6:27 |
| APA | APA Corporation (Apache) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Named with Antero as the gas leg of the portfolio — "Apache or APA, the APA now." Part of the cheap-on-relative-basis energy book at eight-to-nine times earnings. | 6:27 |
| SLB | Schlumberger (SLB) | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The services/driller leg: "We own drillers. We own Schlumberger, we own Transocean… you have to own the service companies, you have to own the producers, and you have to own the midstream." | 6:27 |
| RIG | Transocean | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Owned as an offshore driller inside the same whole-spectrum energy allocation — "we own Schlumberger, we own Transocean." | 6:27 |
| GLD | SPDR Gold Shares (gold bullion) | SA · STK | Positive | Sold part of the gold position into the Nov–Jan peak and has been buying it back: "We bought gold at 4,000, 4,050… I think you can still buy it 4300. I think gold is going to do well in the last half of the year." | 37:03 |
| SLV | iShares Silver Trust (silver bullion) | SA · STK | Positive | Sold all the silver after it ran 215% in 12 months ("when you have something move like that, you have to take it"), and has now bought it back — "we bought added some silver back, just a straight silver," at much cheaper prices. | 37:30 |
| Uranium | Uranium (commodity / unnamed holdings) | — | Positive | "That's probably the top of the list for us for what the US needs a lot more of." The US uses ~50 million pounds a year and produces maybe 2.5 million — "we're so far behind on uranium, it's incredible… we could really get in a mess with uranium." Owned ahead of the government's critical-minerals vault. | 28:42 |
| Copper | Copper & critical minerals (iron, tungsten, antimony — via unnamed companies) | — | Positive | "We've owned copper and still do, in the form of a couple of companies… a lot of copper, a lot of gold, and silver… we own iron, we own tungsten" plus antimony — held "for quite some time," not a new trade. The macro reason: the US is "behind the eight ball" on critical minerals versus China and Russia in a multipolar world "when everybody is hoarding their own stuff." | 26:14 |
| FNV | Franco-Nevada | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bought back over the last six weeks after the miners corrected 35–40%: "on the minor side we went back in the royalty companies, Franco-Nevada." | 37:03 |
| HL | Hecla Mining | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The round trip he uses as the whole lesson: "We owned Hecla at nine bucks last year and sold it over 30 and bought it back this year at 14 and a half or 15… and it's the number one silver producer." | 31:37 |
| AEM | Agnico Eagle Mines | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Repurchased in the six-week replenishment of the gold-miner book — "We bought went back into Agnico Eagle." Miners are cheap on relative earnings, same as the energy names. | 37:30 |
| AGI | Alamos Gold | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Bought in the same window — "we bought Alamos Gold, which is a great company." | 37:30 |
| EQX | Equinox Gold | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | "We bought a little company called Equinox selling at five and a half times earnings 27 earnings and it's still a great buy." | 37:30 |
| LYB | LyondellBasell Industries | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Offered as one of the "things you can own in here that are a little different from the rest": "we have a position in Lyondell Chemical, 6% dividend, and that company's turning around making changes, that we like." | 38:52 |
| BMY | Bristol Myers Squibb | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | "We own Bristol Myers on the drug side" — named in the positive list alongside energy, gold miners, gold and Lyondell. | 39:17 |
| V | Visa | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | "It's starting to look great again for Visa, MasterCard" — payments named as one of the off-consensus places to put money away from the crowded megacap tech trade. | 39:17 |
| MA | Mastercard | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Paired with Visa as "starting to look great again" — the other half of the payments duopoly on his positive list. | 39:17 |
| USB | U.S. Bancorp | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | The only bank Oxbow owns. In financials he'd "stay with the regional banks because they're the ones that still do banking as banking" — the big banks are "real expensive," a lot of them at three times book value. | 40:25 |
| AA | Alcoa | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Explicitly not owned on valuation discipline: "one of the reasons we didn't own Alcoa, for example, is cuz it got ahead of itself… it got up to 85 or something and went to about 45. Now, it's headed back up now." Aluminium is the one base metal Oxbow owns "not quite as much" of. | 29:17 |
| TXN | Texas Instruments | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cited as the 40-year proof of the semiconductor pattern, not as a call on the stock: "that's a group that's feast or famine. I've been around them for 40 years, and they're all the way back to Texas Instruments." The pattern is what drives his negative view on the big semis. | 38:31 |
| AAPL | Apple | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Advisory context rather than a stance: named among the huge low-cost-basis positions people refuse to trim for tax reasons — "the retail industry today, the number one stock is Apple, I think… they're going to sit there and watch these companies and just have the same idea, I'll never sell because of taxes." | 35:29 |
| AMZN | Amazon | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Context only — listed with Apple, Microsoft and Netflix as the very-low-cost-basis megacaps whose holders won't sell: "you need to take your cost out and take some profit out." | 34:12 |
| NFLX | Netflix | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Context only — one of "the big names… that a lot of people have owned for a long long time" with "really really low cost bases," used to make the take-your-cost-out point. | 34:12 |
| TSLA | Tesla | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Raised by the host (Tesla's proposed 100M-sq-ft Texas data center under the state's construction moratorium). Oakley doesn't rate the stock — he declines the whole data-center theme: "Not for us because we don't know where it's headed," and flags water, not power, as West/South Texas's binding constraint. | 23:20 |
| MRK | Merck | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Historical cautionary tale, not a current view: the late-'80s-to-late-'90s drug run where clients refused to trim for tax reasons — "you had to go another 23 or 24 years before you ever got back to those prices again," and worse after inflation. | 34:35 |
| PFE | Pfizer | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Named with Merck in the same 1980s–90s anecdote — "all of them went up huge numbers" and then took over two decades to regain those prices. Context for the sell-pieces discipline, not a stance on the stock today. | 34:35 |
| MSFT | Microsoft | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | "For the first time in 15, probably 14, 15 years… we've been a seller of Microsoft," out of almost all portfolios (slower where the embedded gains are largest). "We don't see a lot for a stock, and that's been a great company for us. Don't get me wrong… Where am I going to be in 2 or 3 years here with this company?" People are "blinded by these big hyperscalers." | 22:03 |
| UAL | United Airlines Holdings | QT · SA · STK · FA | Negative | His standing reason to avoid airlines entirely: "I did a study… if you went all the way back on United Airlines, you never made any money on it. If you take from the time they came public to now, you wouldn't have really ever made any money on the thing." | 41:22 |
"View" is Ted Oakley's stance in this conversation (Positive / Neutral / Negative), not a price rating. Several Neutral rows are context or anecdote (TXN, MRK, PFE, AAPL, AMZN, NFLX, TSLA) rather than an argued position — the cell text says which. He was also explicitly negative on semiconductors as a group, the big money-center banks (three times book) and 30-year Treasury paper, but named no ticker for any of them; those are covered in the talking points below. Research links: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. Commodities held through unnamed companies have no ticker.
A jargon-free summary of the thesis behind each pick — what it actually is and why he holds that view. (Plain-language companion to the table above; renders on each ticker's consolidated page.)
Chevron is one of the world's biggest integrated oil companies — it pumps oil, ships it, refines it and sells it. Oakley owns it as the "big producer" anchor of an energy allocation that deliberately spans every part of the industry rather than betting on one slice.
The reason he's comfortable at $83 oil: the whole group is priced as though oil is going back to $50. Companies like this trade around seven to eight times their annual profits with solid, growing dividends, while the S&P 500 as a whole trades near 25 times. A lot of institutions still refuse to buy fossil-fuel companies on principle — that boycott, he thinks, is precisely why the shares are cheap.
Matador is a mid-sized US shale producer, mostly in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico. It's the "midsize" rung on Oakley's energy ladder, sitting between the supermajors and the small drillers.
Importantly, he doesn't own it as a leveraged bet on the oil price. Asked directly whether resource stocks are just high-beta ways to be long oil, he said no: "we like them because of the earnings look" — he believes he can see this company's profits clearly for the next six to eight quarters, and at eight or nine times earnings that visibility is being given away.
Antero is a large Appalachian natural-gas and natural-gas-liquids producer. It's the gas leg of the portfolio, and it carries a strategic point Oakley makes twice: natural gas is the only critical resource where he thinks the United States is not badly behind China and Russia. Everything else — copper, uranium, tungsten, antimony — the US has to import.
So gas is both a cheap earnings stream and the one energy input the country can supply itself in a world where "everybody is hoarding their own stuff."
APA (the old Apache Corporation) is an international oil-and-gas producer with big positions in the Permian, Egypt and the North Sea. Oakley names it alongside Antero as his gas exposure.
Same logic as the rest of the energy book: it's part of a group trading at single-digit multiples of earnings with real dividends, while the index it sits inside trades at 25 times earnings and a 42 CAPE. He's buying visible profits cheaply, not making a directional oil call.
Schlumberger is the world's largest oilfield-services company — it doesn't own the oil, it provides the technology, equipment and crews that get it out of the ground. When producers spend more, SLB gets paid regardless of where the oil price finally settles.
Oakley's rule is that you can't pick the winning slice of energy in advance, so you own all of it: producers, midstream pipelines, gas and services. Services are the leg most people skip, and the leg most levered to the drilling activity a tight oil market forces.
Transocean owns and operates offshore drilling rigs — the giant floating platforms leased to oil companies drilling in deep water. It's the most cyclical, highest-operating-leverage corner of energy: when day-rates for rigs rise, profits rise far faster.
He owns it as the drilling half of the "service companies" leg. The whole-spectrum approach means accepting that some legs are more volatile than others; the point is not to be absent from the part of the industry that ends up capturing the tightness.
This is straight exposure to the gold price rather than to a mining company. Oxbow trimmed part of its gold in the November-to-January blow-off, then bought back in around $4,000–4,050 as the metal retested that level two or three times.
He still thinks it's buyable at $4,300 and expects gold to "do well in the last half of the year." Underneath is his ten-year frame: a commodity and hard-asset cycle, a Treasury market that no longer trusts US fiscal policy, and a dollar he thinks likely drifts lower as US influence in the Middle East fades.
Silver is the position that best illustrates how he operates. It rose 215% in twelve months — at which point, he says, "you have to take it, because that's a commodity." Oxbow sold all of it into the strength late last year and in January, took the tax hit, and annoyed some clients doing so.
What told him the top was near wasn't a price target but the identity of the buyers: momentum funds that "always come in late… real hot money, and when they leave, they just sell at any price." After the correction he has bought silver back — "just a straight silver," meaning the metal itself rather than miners — restoring the same portfolio weight at a much lower price.
Uranium is the fuel for nuclear power stations. Oakley calls it "the top of the list for what the US needs a lot more of," and the reason is a supply gap that is hard to argue with: the United States consumes roughly 50 million pounds a year and produces about 2.5 million. Everything else is imported, increasingly from countries the US is competing with.
He points out that Oxbow bought this before Washington did — the federal government has only now started a "vault" to stockpile critical minerals. "We could really get in a mess with uranium" is his summary of the risk, and owning it is his answer. He doesn't name a specific vehicle or miner in this conversation.
Copper is the metal that carries electricity, so it sits behind every data centre, grid upgrade and electrified building. Oakley owns it "in the form of a couple of companies" he doesn't name, along with iron, tungsten and antimony — and he stresses these are long-standing holdings, not a new data-centre trade: "it's not something new to us really. It just so happened that it's playing probably stronger than it would have normally."
The strategic argument is a national one. The US is "behind the eight ball" on nearly every critical mineral, while China and Russia hold much of the supply, and the world is fragmenting into blocs "when everybody is hoarding their own stuff." Owning the metals is how he expresses that without having to pick which AI company wins. (He owns comparatively little aluminium.)
Franco-Nevada is a royalty and streaming company, not a miner. It pays cash up front to help build somebody else's mine, and in return takes a permanent slice of that mine's future production or revenue. Because it has no crews, no diesel bill and no cost overruns, it captures a rising gold price without the operating risk that sinks ordinary miners.
It was the first thing Oxbow bought back after the mining sector fell 35–40% — "on the miner side we went back in the royalty companies, Franco-Nevada" — which is characteristic: re-enter through the lowest-risk vehicle first.
Hecla is the largest silver producer in the United States. It is also the cleanest illustration of Oakley's sell-and-rebuy discipline: Oxbow owned it at $9, sold it above $30 when silver went parabolic, and bought it back this year at $14.50–$15.
He offers it almost apologetically — "I'm not making it up" — because the round trip sounds too neat. The point he draws from it is that taking a 200%+ gain, paying the tax, and waiting for the momentum crowd to leave is a repeatable process, not luck. He owns the same stock again today at less than half his exit price.
Agnico Eagle is one of the largest and best-run gold miners, with most of its mines in politically safe jurisdictions like Canada and Finland. Oxbow sold down its gold-miner book into the January peak and has bought Agnico back over the last six weeks after the group corrected 35–40%.
The valuation case is the same one he applies to energy: miners are cheap against their own earnings while the broad index is expensive, and he expects "all of that stuff will do well going into the end of the year."
Alamos is a mid-tier gold producer with mines in Canada and Mexico. Oakley describes it simply as "a great company" and one of the names bought during the six-week replenishment of the precious-metals book.
It fits the pattern of what he re-bought: established producers with real output, purchased after a sharp correction rather than chased during the run.
Equinox is a smaller gold producer with mines across the Americas — "a little company" in his words. It's the one name where he gives an explicit number: it's "selling at five and a half times earnings" on 2027 estimates, "and it's still a great buy."
Five and a half times earnings means the company's expected annual profit would repay the entire share price in about five and a half years. For comparison, the S&P 500 trades near 25 times. That gap is the whole argument.
LyondellBasell is one of the world's largest plastics and petrochemicals makers — it turns oil and gas feedstock into the raw materials for packaging, pipes and car parts. The industry has been in a deep down-cycle, which is why the shares yield about 6% in dividends.
Oakley's case is a turnaround: "that company's turning around, making changes, that we like." You're paid 6% a year to wait while management restructures, and the same cheap North American gas that makes his energy names work is this business's main input cost.
Bristol Myers is a large pharmaceutical company. Oakley mentions it briefly — "we own Bristol Myers on the drug side" — as part of a positive list built around things that aren't the crowded megacap technology trade.
Worth reading alongside his Merck/Pfizer anecdote later in the conversation: he knows the sector can go a decade or more without making money, which is exactly why he's willing to own it when nobody wants it rather than after a ten-year run.
Visa doesn't lend money or take credit risk — it runs the network that moves card payments between banks and merchants and takes a small fee on every transaction. That makes it a toll booth on consumer spending, with revenue that rises automatically with inflation.
His comment is short but pointed: after a period out of favour, "it's starting to look great again for Visa, MasterCard." In a portfolio built around inflation protection, a business whose fee is a percentage of a rising price level is a natural fit.
Mastercard is the other half of the global card-payment duopoly and works the same way as Visa: it operates the rails, collects a fee per transaction, and carries none of the lending risk the banks do.
Oakley names the pair together as one of the "number of things you can own in here that are a little different from the rest" — his shorthand for quality businesses outside the semiconductor and hyperscaler crowd he's selling.
U.S. Bancorp is a large regional bank — it takes deposits and makes loans, which sounds obvious until you compare it with the money-centre giants. Those, Oakley says, now "make money in every way you can think of, from trading to merger acquisition," and trade at up to three times book value, meaning you pay $3 for each $1 of net assets.
He wants "the ones that still do banking as banking," and this is the only bank Oxbow owns. If you want financial exposure as the yield curve steepens, his instruction is to get it through regionals rather than the expensive, opaque big banks.
Alcoa is the big US aluminium producer. Oakley uses it as an example of price discipline rather than as a recommendation: Oxbow deliberately didn't own it "because it got ahead of itself" — the stock ran to about $85 and then fell to roughly $45.
His note now is that "it's headed back up." He owns "not quite as much aluminium" as copper, and the underlying story is real (a viewer who's an electrician pointed out data centres now run miles of aluminium conductor, substituting for copper) — but he wouldn't pay the earlier price for it.
Texas Instruments is one of the oldest chip companies in America, and Oakley invokes it as evidence rather than as a pick: he's watched semiconductors for 40 years, "all the way back to Texas Instruments," and the group has always been "feast or famine."
The pattern he's describing is the chip cycle. Shortages produce enormous profits, those profits fund a wave of new capacity, and the capacity arrives just as demand cools — "you're going to blow them up, but they're going to come right back and give it all back one of these days." That history is the basis of his one clear sell instruction in this interview: use current strength as a time to reduce the big semiconductor names.
This is the headline move of the interview. Oxbow has sold Microsoft out of almost every portfolio — "for the first time in 15, probably 14, 15 years" — trimming more slowly only where clients have huge embedded gains and would face large tax bills.
He is careful not to call it a bad company: "that's been a great company for us. Don't get me wrong." The objection is forward return at this price. His test is a simple question — "Where am I going to be in 2 or 3 years here with this company? Is it really going to produce for me?" — and his read is that "people are blinded by these big hyperscalers right now. They're not thinking about the next two or three or four years."
The same instinct sits behind his refusal to invest in the data-centre build-out: he compares it to the fibre-optic construction boom of 1999–2000, where the capacity built for a "new paradigm" turned out to be far more than anyone could use, and the stocks suffered for years.
Airlines are Oakley's example of a business you can analyse forever and still never get paid for owning. He ran the study: "if you went all the way back on United Airlines, you never made any money on it — from the time they came public to now."
The point isn't a forecast about next quarter's traffic. It's a screening rule: if an industry's entire public history shows no cumulative return to shareholders — because fuel, labour and price competition consume every good cycle — you don't need a view on it at all. You skip it, the same way the host's mentor refused to hire anyone pitching Citibank.
Notes from the public YouTube interview (transcript in transcript.txt) for personal study. Views are Ted Oakley's / Oxbow Advisors'. Not investment advice. © The David Lin Report for the source material.