For the first time today, oil broke above $85 per barrel, partly due to the threat of yet more violence in the Middle East. Now I'm not going to argue that $85 per barrel is a catastrophic increase over, say, $80 per barrel -- though 6% is nothing to sneeze at -- but it's just stacking onto the incredible rise of crude oil over the past few years. According to nominal oil price data from the Department of Energy, a price of $85 would mean that crude oil is up an amazing 393%, or roughly 17% per year, since 1997.
As investors, we can look at this from the perspective of how much the continued rise will hurt the bottom line for a broad range of companies like Wal-Mart, JB Hunt, and Southwest Airlines.
On the other hand, we can also spend our time looking at the companies that are expected to continue to benefit from the amazing surge in oil prices. To get some ideas, I tapped the CAPS community and looked at a few different sub-segments of the oil industry
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