I almost scrolled past the utilities line on a screen last week. Red, again. Not dramatic red, just the dull kind that sits there while everything flashier argues about artificial intelligence and the next earnings print. Then I checked the year. Down more than 3 percent while the broader market has spent most of 2026 acting like gravity is optional. After a 13 percent climb in 2025 and a 20 percent jump the year before that, the sector looked tired. Tired is not the same as broken. Sometimes the unloved corner is where the arithmetic quietly improves.
That is the argument making the rounds among market strategists right now. Utility stocks, after a bruising third quarter, are trading near 15 times forward earnings. That multiple has a habit of showing up near bottoms. The S&P 500, by comparison, still sits around 19 times. You do not need a spreadsheet obsession to feel the gap. You do need a clear head about why the gap opened, and what would have to go right for it to close without chewing up another year of dividends.
Why The Worst Pocket Of The Market May Be The Setup
The third quarter did most of the damage. Utilities fell about 13 percent in those three months, the worst quarterly showing since the opening stretch of 2020. That is not a gentle rotation. That is a sector getting marked down in a hurry. Strategists who cover the group have been blunt about the pile-up. Rates jumped. The Federal Reserve tightened. Wildfire reform stalled in California. Political noise around data centers spilled into states that used to feel politically sleepy, Texas included.
Everything that could lean on the story leaned on it at once. I have found that clustered bad news is often more useful than a single clean catalyst. A single shock can be a warning. A pile of shocks can be a clearing event, provided the underlying cash flows did not actually crack. In this case, a lot of the selling looks like valuation math, not a sudden discovery that people stopped needing electricity.
Sectors rarely look cheap when the headlines are kind. They look cheap when the easy reasons to own them have all failed in the same quarter.
Perhaps the most interesting part is the growth comment attached to that 15 times multiple. The old utility bargain was a slow-growth bond proxy on sale. This one, if the strategists are right, comes with a better earnings slope than the last time the multiple sat here, back in early 2024. Cheap plus better growth is a different animal from cheap plus stagnation. It is also easier to talk yourself into, which is exactly why it deserves a colder look.
What The Slide Actually Measured
Start with the scoreboard, because memory gets romantic fast. Two strong years. Then a year that is slightly negative, with the pain concentrated in one quarter. Year to date the sector is off more than 3 percent. That is not a crash. It is a reset after a run that had already pulled a lot of yield-hungry money into the group.
Bond yields did the heavy lifting. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note climbed to 5.35 percent this week, the highest reading since 2002. When a government bond pays that much, a regulated utility has to justify itself twice. Once on the dividend. Again on the chance that the dividend grows. Safety, which used to be the whole sales pitch, stops being free.
I keep a simple mental rule for this. If the 10-year is rising because growth is booming and credit is easy, utilities can still lag even if their own customers are fine. If the 10-year is rising because inflation refuses to quit, the lag gets nastier, because regulators do not reprice allowed returns overnight. The 2026 version has looked more like the second story. Inflation worry, tighter policy, and a market that suddenly remembered duration exists.
- Back-to-back annual gains in 2024 and 2025 left the sector priced for calm.
- The third quarter erased a large slice of that calm in a single hit.
- A 5.35 percent 10-year yield reset the comparison every income investor actually makes.
- Policy headlines, from wildfire rules to data-center politics, piled on at the same time.
None of those bullets is a thesis by itself. Together they explain why a defensive group stopped behaving defensively. Defense is a relative idea. It works when the thing you are defending against is a growth scare. It fails, at least for a while, when the thing you are defending against is the price of money.
Rates Did The Pricing, Not A Demand Collapse
Utilities are rate-sensitive in a way that equity investors occasionally forget until the bill arrives. The business model is built on long-lived assets, regulated returns, and dividends that compete with bonds. Raise the discount rate and the present value of those dividends shrinks, even if next quarter’s kilowatt-hours look fine. That is not a scandal. It is arithmetic.
The Fed’s tighter stance this year reinforced the message. Easier policy would have given the sector a narrative tailwind: lower funding costs, a friendlier spread versus Treasuries, maybe a bid from investors rotating out of cash. Tightening did the opposite. Funding a multi-year grid buildout is not free when the policy rate is leaning against you. Equity holders feel that before the rate case does.
Still, demand did not roll over. Households still cool houses and charge cars. Factories still run. And the new load story, data centers, has not vanished just because local politics got louder. What changed is the market’s willingness to pay up for that load while bond yields sat at levels last seen when flip phones were still a thing. In my experience, that willingness returns in stages, not in a single morning headline.
A Multiple That Has Marked Floors Before
Valuation is where the bargain case either holds or becomes a slogan. Around 15 times forward earnings is not a magic number. It is a neighborhood. Strategists who follow the group point out that utility stocks have tended to bottom near that multiple, and that we are back in the neighborhood with a better growth profile than the last visit in early 2024.
Put the broader market next to it and the discount is obvious. A 15 times utility versus a 19 times index is a four-turn gap. Four turns will not make you rich by Friday. It does change the burden of proof. At 19 times, you are paying for a smooth path. At 15 times, you are paid, at least a little, for the path being bumpy.
| Snapshot | Utilities | Broader Market |
| Recent forward multiple | About 15 times | About 19 times |
| 2026 year-to-date move | Down more than 3 percent | Generally firmer |
| Prior two years | Up 20 percent, then 13 percent | Strong, leadership narrower |
| Worst recent quarter | Down about 13 percent in Q3 | Not the pressure point |
| Main macro rival | 10-year yield at 5.35 percent | Growth narratives still bid |
Tables like that can lie by omission. A cheap multiple on falling earnings is a trap. A cheap multiple on stable, regulated earnings with a visible capex cycle is closer to a setup. The open question is whether the earnings line really is more durable this time. I think the power-demand story gives that claim a fighting chance. I do not think it makes the claim automatic.
Growth Is No Longer Just A Polite Word
For a long time, utility growth meant population, a bit of industrial load, and whatever the regulator allowed you to earn on new poles and wires. Steady. Unthrilling. Fine for a retiree who wanted the check. Less fine for anyone comparing the sector with software.
The load picture has shifted. Large computing campuses want power in lumps that used to belong to aluminum smelters. Grid operators are rewriting interconnection queues. Transmission projects that sat in planning binders for a decade suddenly have customers attached to them. That does not mean every utility is a growth stock wearing a hard hat. It means the sector average earnings slope can be steeper than the last cycle, if regulators let the spend earn a return and if the projects actually get built.
There is a catch, and it is not subtle. Communities that liked the tax base are less sure they like the water use, the substations, or the politics. Backlash has shown up even in states that markets used to treat as automatically friendly. A project delayed is not a project cancelled, but delay is expensive when you financed the expectation. Power demand is real. Permission to serve it is the variable.
A workable utility rebound, roughly: Rates stop climbing Allowed returns hold Large-load projects stay on schedule Dividends keep their streak The multiple does not need heroics, just a drift back toward normal
I like that sketch because it does not require a miracle. It requires the absence of a second shock. Markets are better at pricing a known problem than an accumulating one. The third quarter was the accumulating kind. If the next two quarters are merely ordinary, the multiple has room.
Wildfire Rules And Election Noise Are Not Side Notes
California’s failure to pass wildfire reforms landed in the same quarter as the rate spike. That matters more than a generic political headline. Liability, insurance, and the cost of hardening lines are balance-sheet items, not vibes. A utility that cannot get a clearer framework on fire risk has a higher cost of capital whether or not the 10-year cooperates. Investors have learned, sometimes the hard way, that a western franchise can reprice overnight when the legal weather changes.
Election noise is fuzzier, and fuzzier risks often get over-discounted and then under-discounted in turns. Talk of taxing data-center load, slowing permits, or revisiting rate design does not hit earnings this month. It hits the terminal value people were willing to pay in 2025. Texas getting pulled into that conversation surprised some holders who had filed the state under safe. Safe is a relative term in a sector where the customer, the regulator, and the politician are often the same public.
Would I avoid every name with western exposure because one reform bill stalled? No. Would I pay a peak multiple for that exposure while the bill is stalled and yields are at a 24-year high? Also no. The bargain case is partly that you no longer have to.
Names That Keep Coming Up
Strategists circling the group have pointed to AES, Evergy, and OGE Energy as examples of the affordable end of the tape. I am not treating that list as a shopping basket. I am treating it as a map of where the argument is being stress-tested: different regions, different regulatory styles, different degrees of large-load exposure.
AES has long been the more international, more contract-heavy name in casual conversations about the sector, which means it does not always trade like a plain regulated utility. That can help when domestic politics are messy. It can hurt when currency, counterparties, or project timing do the messing instead. Evergy sits closer to a classic Midwest regulated profile, the sort of franchise income investors think they understand until a rate case reminds them they do not. OGE Energy brings a mix of utility operations and a legacy energy angle that can either cushion a dull power year or add a factor you did not budget for.
The point of naming them is not a tip. It is a reminder that “utilities” is a label, not a single stock. A 15 times sector multiple can hide a 12 times name with a real problem and an 18 times name that never really got cheap. If you are hunting the bargain, you still have to open the filings.
- Separate regulated earnings from merchant or contract earnings before you compare multiples.
- Read the latest rate-case calendar, not last year’s investor day.
- Check how much of the growth plan depends on one or two large customers.
- Look at the dividend coverage, not just the yield printed on the quote page.
- Ask what happens to the equity plan if the 10-year stays above 5 percent for another year.
Income Buyers And Total-Return Buyers Are Not The Same Person
A lot of the money that owns this sector does not wake up wanting a double. It wakes up wanting the dividend and a sleepable drawdown. That client has had a rude year. Yields on the stocks rose as prices fell, which is the polite way of saying you were paid to wait while the price did the unpleasant work. Whether that payment was enough depends on what else you could have bought. At a 5.35 percent Treasury, the hurdle is not theoretical.
Total-return buyers are playing a different game. They want the multiple to mean-revert and the earnings line to keep climbing on grid spend and large-load contracts. They can tolerate a choppy dividend story if the capital gain does the work. Those two buyers can own the same ticker and still be having different arguments. When they both show up, the stock rips. When only one of them is interested, it grinds.
Right now the income buyer is cautious because the bond alternative is loud. The total-return buyer is cautious because the third quarter proved the sector can drop 13 percent without a recession. Caution from both sides is how you get a 15 times multiple. It is also how you get a bounce if either side blinks.
A bargain in a bond-proxy sector is never just about the stock. It is about the bond you did not buy, and whether you will regret that choice in eighteen months.
A portfolio note I keep taped above the yield screen
How The Spread Versus Bonds Should Frame The Entry
I do not have a magic spread. I do have a habit. Before I add to a utility, I write down the stock’s dividend yield, the 10-year yield, and the gap. Then I write what I think earnings growth can add over three years if the rate case goes normally. If the gap is tiny and the growth is a hope, I pass. If the gap is uncomfortable and the growth is mostly contracted or regulator-visible, I get interested.
This year’s gap got uncomfortable because the Treasury side moved, not because utilities slashed payouts. That is the cleaner version of a selloff. Dirty versions involve dividend cuts, dilutive equity raises at bad prices, or a regulator taking the allowed return down. I have not seen that as the dominant 2026 story. I have seen valuation compression. Compression can reverse without anyone issuing an apology.
There is still a funding question. Building transmission and generation, or contracting it, eats cash. If equity markets stay shut and yields stay high, companies issue at discounts and your bargain gets diluted. Watch the financing calendar the way a credit analyst would. A cheap stock that must sell more of itself is less cheap than the screenshot suggests.
Data Centers Are A Growth Engine And A Political Target
It is worth sitting with the contradiction. The same load that makes the growth story better than early 2024 is the load politicians have learned to campaign against. Water. Land. Noise. The fear that household rates subsidize a campus that employs fewer people than a warehouse. Some of that fear is fair. Some of it is theater. Markets have to price both.
Utilities that sign large-load contracts with real credit behind them, and that wall off the cost from residential ratepayers, are in a stronger spot than utilities waving at a queue. The backlash in previously quiet states is a reminder that the queue is not a customer. A signed, financed, permitted project is. Until that distinction is in the valuation, I would rather pay a slightly higher multiple for visibility than a lower one for a slide deck.
Could the backlash fade if power prices stay contained and tax revenue shows up? Sure. Local politics often softens once the construction checks clear. Could it harden if a summer peak exposes a thin reserve margin? Also sure. Either path is a 2027 earnings argument as much as a 2026 price argument. The stock can rerate before the megawatts arrive, which is both the opportunity and the risk of buying the story early.
What Would Make The Bargain Thesis Wrong
I get suspicious of any cheap-sector piece that cannot name the failure case. Here is mine.
Yields do not stall at 5.35 percent. They push higher, and the Fed stays tight because inflation data refuse to cooperate. In that world, 15 times is not a floor. It is a pause. Utility stocks can trade at lower multiples for longer than an income investor’s patience, especially if credit spreads widen and equity issuance gets punitive.
Or the growth story frays. Large-load customers delay. A flagship wildfire ruling goes the wrong way. A major rate case cuts the allowed return just as capex peaks. Then the “better growth than last time” line becomes a marketing sentence, and the multiple was cheap for a reason. Cheap for a reason is the phrase that empties more brokerage accounts than expensive for a reason.
A third failure is simpler. The rest of the market keeps working, leadership stays narrow, and nobody needs a defensive rerating. Utilities can be affordable and still ignored. Affordable and ignored is not a loss if the dividend shows up. It is a loss relative to whatever you sold to buy it. Opportunity cost is a real cost. People just do not print it on the statement.
- A further leg up in the 10-year yield would pressure the floor thesis directly.
- A adverse legal or regulatory hit in a fire-exposed franchise would not stay local in sentiment.
- Delayed large-load projects would pull the growth premium back out of the multiple.
- Forced equity issuance at depressed prices would dilute the bargain you thought you bought.
Position Size Beats Prediction
You do not have to decide whether utilities are the trade of the year. You have to decide whether a discounted, dividend-paying, asset-heavy group deserves a defined slice of a portfolio that got very comfortable owning whatever was working. I have found that the second question ages better.
A modest add after a 13 percent quarter is different from a heroic overweight. The first respects the valuation signal. The second pretends you know where the 10-year settles. If you already own a market-weight slug through a broad fund, the incremental decision is smaller than the commentary makes it sound. If you own none, because the last two years felt too dull, the reset is the first time in a while the entry does not look late.
Rebalance rules help. Some investors add when the sector lags the index by a set amount over a quarter. Others add when the earnings yield gap versus the 10-year crosses a personal line. Both beat refreshing a quote page and calling it research. The third quarter gave both camps a signal. Whether they take it is a temperament question as much as a model question.
Dividends Still Have To Be Earned
It is easy, after a price drop, to talk about yield as if the company mailed it from a vault. Utilities earn the dividend by collecting rates, keeping outages inside the budget, and not surprising the commission. A streak of annual increases is a culture, not a contract with you. Cultures hold until a bad fire season, a botched plant, or a political demand to “share the pain” interrupts them.
Coverage matters more at 5 percent Treasuries than it did at 3. A payout that looked conservative in 2024 can look merely adequate when funding costs jump. I would rather own a slightly lower yield with room to grow than a headline yield that needs everything to go right. That preference will make some screens look boring. Boring is allowed. Boring is sort of the product.
There is also the tax texture, which depends on the account you use and the wrapper you choose. A fund, a single name, a preferred sitting nearby in the capital structure: these are not the same income. The bargain conversation in the common stock does not automatically transfer to every related security. Read the prospectus the way you would read a rate case. Slowly, and with a pen.
Comparing This Reset With The Last Scare
The worst quarter since early 2020 invites a lazy comparison. That period was a demand shock, a liquidity shock, and a fear shock stacked together. This one is mostly a discount-rate shock with political static. Customers did not disappear. The grid did not shut. What disappeared was the willingness to pay 2025 prices for 2026 bond math.
That distinction should make the rebound path different. In a demand shock, you wait for volumes. In a discount-rate shock, you wait for the rate of change in yields to cool, not necessarily for yields to revisit the old lows. Utilities can work with a 10-year that stays elevated, if it stops climbing and if earnings grind higher underneath. They struggle when the climb itself is the trend.
Early 2024 is the closer comparison, and it is the one strategists are using. Multiples washed out, then the growth narrative around load and grid spend gave buyers a reason to return. We are back at a similar multiple with, allegedly, a sturdier growth case. Allegedly is the right word until a few more quarters of capex and contracting are in the books. I am willing to grant the allegation a partial credit. I am not willing to grade the paper yet.
A Portfolio Role, Not A Personality
Sectors acquire personalities online. Utilities are the cautious uncle. Tech is the prodigy. Energy is the volatile cousin. Personalities are useless when the uncle just lost 13 percent in a quarter and the prodigy is priced for perfection. Roles are better. The role here is ballast that pays you, with an option on grid investment that the last cycle did not fully price.
Ballast that drops double digits is still ballast if the rest of the book dropped more, or if the drop was the repricing you needed before the next five years of spend. It is not ballast if you needed the money in November. Time horizon is the unfashionable input. A retiree drawing 4 percent and a foundation with a perpetual mandate should not copy each other’s utility weight, even if they read the same note about 15 times earnings.
If I were building the sleeve from scratch this month, I would mix a broad sector holding with one or two single names I had actually read, rather than three tickers from a paragraph. Concentration is how a wildfire headline becomes your month. Diversification inside the sector is how a stalled reform bill stays a line item.
Entry checklist: yield gap vs 10-year, payout coverage, rate-case calendar, large-load visibility, financing need, wildfire or storm exposure, position size versus the rest of the book.The Emotional Trap After Two Good Years
Anchoring is the quiet enemy. Anyone who bought the sector in 2023 and held through the 20 percent year and the 13 percent year feels like a genius who then got mugged. The account is still ahead. The recent screen is not. That mix produces bad decisions: selling the whole sleeve to “stop the bleeding,” or doubling down to get even with a quarter. Neither is analysis.
The cleaner frame is replacement cost of the exposure. If you sold today, what would you need to believe to buy back in? If the answer is “a lower multiple and a calmer yield,” you may already be looking at it. If the answer is “proof that data-center politics died and the Fed pivoted,” you might wait a long time and pay up for the proof. I lean toward the first answer, with a size that lets me be wrong for another quarter.
There is also career risk inside institutions, which sounds remote until you remember who sets the marginal price. A manager who lagged by owning utilities into a raging growth market does not rush back after a bad quarter. The buying often shows up late, once the relative chart stops falling and the narrative sounds respectable again. Individual investors can move earlier. They can also move dumber. The multiple does not care which.
Regulation Is The Real Business Model
Strip the jargon and a regulated utility sells a government-mediated return on capital. The grid is the asset. The commission is the pricing committee. Customers are captive in a way retailers envy and airlines do not. That structure is why the sector earns a lower multiple in normal times and why it deserves one. You are not buying disruption. You are buying a process.
Processes break in known ways. Allowed returns lag interest rates. Prudence reviews disallow spend. Political appointees arrive with a mandate to freeze bills. Storm cost recovery gets delayed. None of this is new. What feels newer is the scale of the spend being requested at the same time household bills are already a talking point. A commissioner can love reliability and still hate the headline rate increase that pays for it. The equity lives in that gap.
So when someone says the stocks look affordable, translate it. Affordable relative to a process that still functions. If you think the process is about to be rewritten, the multiple is a distraction. I do not think it is about to be rewritten nationwide. I do think individual states can rewrite it locally, which is another argument for not betting the sleeve on one geography.
How I Would Talk About This At A Desk
If a colleague asked for the thirty-second version, it would sound like this. The sector had two good years, then a quarter where rates, policy, and politics hit together. The forward multiple is back near 15 times, a zone that has marked lows before, and the growth backdrop is better than the last time we were here. The 10-year at 5.35 percent is the rebuttal. Until that rebuttal softens or earnings outrun it, the bounce can be grudging.
The longer version is the one you are reading. Grudging bounces are still bounces. They reward people who sized the position before the narrative felt safe. They punish people who need a parade. Utility stocks rarely throw parades. They throw dividends, rate cases, and the occasional ugly quarter that resets the entry.
I would rather own a grudging setup with a visible yield than chase a story that already assumes the parade. That is a preference, not a law. Preferences are what keep a portfolio from becoming a pile of other people’s conviction.
Signals Worth Watching From Here
A few markers would tell me the bargain case is gaining weight rather than just sounding neat.
First, the 10-year stops making fresh highs. It does not need to crash. A plateau would do more for utility stocks than another speech about long-term power demand. Second, a major rate case lands without a cut to allowed returns. Third, one of the loud political fights around large load produces a template other states can copy, instead of a veto. Fourth, companies fund the plan without a rush of discounted equity. Fifth, dividend actions stay boring. Boring dividend actions are a feature.
If those show up while the multiple is still near 15 times, the asymmetry improves. If yields spike again and a franchise-level legal hit lands, the asymmetry was a story we told ourselves after a red quarter. Both outcomes are available. That is why position size belongs in the first paragraph of any note like this, not the appendix.
A Word On Timing The Unloved
Nobody rings a bell at 15 times. The multiple can sit there while prices drift lower if estimates come down in parallel. Forward earnings are a moving denominator. A stock that looks cheaper because next year’s number was cut is not the same as a stock that looks cheaper because the price fell. Check which one you are holding.
I also distrust the phrase “everything went wrong, so it must be done.” Sometimes everything went wrong because the setup was fragile. The fragile version of utilities would be a sector priced for falling rates that then met rising rates. That happened. The resilient version is a sector whose assets still earn a regulated return and whose customers still expand. That is also happening. Holding both ideas at once is uncomfortable. It is closer to the truth than picking one for the headline.
So where does that leave a reader who just wanted to know if the laggard is interesting? Interested, yes. All-in, no. The worst part of the market this year has a case. The case rests on a multiple, a growth slope, and the hope that the 10-year is closer to a peak than a waypoint. Hope is not a model. A defined buy, a dividend that has to keep arriving, and a refusal to ignore wildfire and political risk come nearer.
Putting The Quarter In A Longer Frame
Zoom out past the red third quarter and the picture is a sector that compounded nicely, then gave some back when the cost of money jumped. Compounding with a giveback is the normal shape of a defensive group that got popular. Popularity was the 2024 and 2025 problem. Unpopularity is the 2026 opportunity, if you can stand owning something your feed is not celebrating.
Feeds are a terrible portfolio manager. They reward whatever just moved and bury whatever just hurt. Utility stocks are buried enough that a strategist can say they look affordable without sounding reckless. Affordable is not the same as safe. Safe was the word people used before the quarter. I would retire it for a while. Reasonably priced, dividend-supported, and exposed to a real buildout is enough.
If the buildout slips, you still own essential service revenues and a yield that competed poorly with Treasuries only because Treasuries moved. If the buildout holds, you own that yield plus a growth kicker the sector did not always have. The stock price has to navigate both scripts. You do not have to guess the script in full to decide the odds are better at 15 times than they were after a 20 percent year.
That is the whole pitch, stripped of theater. A laggard with a historical valuation floor, a messier macro backdrop, and a business that still sends bills every month. I can work with that. I can also walk away if the 10-year keeps climbing and the filings start to sweat. Either choice is cleaner than pretending the third quarter did not change the entry.
What I Would Actually Do With New Cash
New cash is the honest test. Old holdings come with stories. New cash comes with alternatives, including a Treasury note that just printed a yield last seen in 2002. Against that alternative, I would not dump a windfall into the sector in one afternoon. I would stage it.
A first slice now, because the multiple is in the zone that has mattered before. A second slice if estimates hold through the next earnings round and the 10-year stops setting highs. A third only if a regulatory or political scare knocks a quality name below the sector multiple for reasons that do not touch its franchise. That is dull. Dull has a better track record in this group than clever.
I would keep single-name risk inside names whose regulatory map I can explain without a glossary. AES, Evergy, and OGE Energy are reasonable places to start reading, not a reason to stop reading. If a holding needs a paragraph of caveats about merchant exposure, wildfire liability, or a customer concentration I cannot quantify, it gets a smaller weight. The sector bargain does not obligate me to own every chapter of it.
And I would write the sell rule before the buy settles. For me that rule is not a price target. It is a break in the dividend logic, a financing plan that dilutes without a matching earnings lift, or a yield gap versus Treasuries that closes because the stock ran, not because I need the money. Rules written after the run are just narratives with numbers.
The Part The Screens Will Not Show You
Screens will show you the 3 percent year-to-date decline, the 13 percent quarter, the 15 times multiple, the 19 times market. They will not show you whether you can hold a boring asset through another boring year if the rerate takes its time. That capacity is the edge, if there is one. Professional flows can be forced. Personal flows are usually emotional. The emotional trade here is to demand excitement from a sector that pays you for not being exciting.
Maybe that is why the setup appeals to me more on a down week than on an up one. Up weeks invite stories about data centers rewriting the American grid by Thursday. Down weeks invite the arithmetic. Arithmetic says the worst pocket of the tape is no longer priced like the last two years happened. Arithmetic does not say the next year is easy. I will take the first claim and stay humble about the second.
If you own nothing in the group, this is a reasonable moment to stop owning nothing. If you own a lot, this is not a moment to make it your personality. Utility stocks look affordable because a hard quarter did what hard quarters do. The rest is execution, rates, and whether the growth that is supposed to come with the multiple actually shows up in the filings. I plan to read those filings. The multiple can wait its turn.
