The 'best time ever' to invest in the energy sector, but a recession in beer

Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital — manager of the firm's energy infrastructure funds as well as its new AI Infrastructure ETF — says that in a three-decade career, he has never seen a better time to be looking at the energy sector, thanks to being the world's largest energy producer with opportunities to remain the global leader, but also due to the power needs created by artificial intelligence. He says "Electricity is the new oil," driving the economy forward the way oil companies used to. Thummel notes in his Market Call interview that he has now seen some Bitcoin mining companies morph into data centers, largely because the megatech companies are paying to get access to the power supply that the crypto mining companies have developed.

Lester Jones, chief economist for the National Beer Wholesalers Association, discusses the latest "Beer Purchasers Index," a forward-looking measure of economic activity that he says has reached the lowest point in its 10-year-plus history, indicative of a "beer recession," with less orders, declining sales and other economic indicators showing an alarming down cycle for the industry that could be a bad sign for the broader economy.

In the Big Interview, Rick Pitcairn, chief global strategist at Pitcairn — a firm that works with ultra high net worth families managing money over lifetimes — discusses the importance of not allowing today's bumps and headlines become something bigger in a portfolio. It eliminates "the execution risk of timing," and allows the market to turn a steady return in the high single digits" to become "a super wealth accumulator." As a result, he's fully diversified, and suggesting investors lean into international stocks and bonds, hard assets and more now.