Investing

Boring VST Stock Runs Past NVDA Stock, SMCI Stock, and the Rest

Austin Smith

Published: October 17, 2024 8:30 am

Key Points:

• Vistra (VST) dominate the S&P 500 with a 260% gain, power by AI and data center energy demand.
• Utilities are up 20%, is on their best quarter in 20 years as energy needs emerge.
• After Vistra’s big blast, considering solid options like Dominion or Duke might be wise.
• Also: Start here to retire rich!

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Edited Video Transcript:

Utilities have gone from being a very boring business to being a very interesting business, particularly if you’re supplying any kind of energy that can be used in any way for AI or Bitcoin mining.

I mean, I read a few weeks ago that AI energy consumption worldwide in two years will equal all the energy consumption in Japan.

Okay, that’s how big it’s gonna be.

So, are there stocks here you like?

I mean, is there something that’s, is there a standout company?

Well, I think one of the things that you and probably all of our readers and those watching is the number one stock, the number one stock in the venerable S&P five hundred this year is a utility called Vistra.

The symbol for that is VST.

Okay, Vistra (NYSE: VST) is a stunning, and this is truly remarkable.

It is up this year, two hundred and sixty percent.

Sorry, I have to check my notes versus Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which is up a solid one hundred and fifty percent.

And the fifty two week trading rates for Vistra is thirty one forty to one hundred and forty.

And that is a nice move.

And the interesting thing about that, and again, like you kind of used as a preface, utilities were always considered, you know, for, you know, grandmothers and, you know, widows and things of that nature.

The utility sector this year, this is another stunning thing, is the most, it’s up over twenty percent, which is the most, it’s the best quarter for utilities since two thousand three.

So over twenty years.

And there was a lot of stock.

So we wrote about this, you know, over and over saying, hey, you know, when rates do start to decline, people will jump on these.

And then the story started to pile in about, you know, using one of the reactors at Three Mile Island for simply for for Microsoft to use it for Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Then that started to come in.

And then Vistra had these huge gains, you know, to make it the number one performing stock.

And, you know, they’ve really, really run.

And while there’s a few I still like, I mean, Dominion (NYSE: D) still is in a reasonably good area.

It still yields four point five, four point six percent.

But a lot of the big boys like Duke and Edison and some of those, they’ve been hit a lot.

Their dividends have gone down because the stock prices have gone up so much.

So I think there’s still I think it’s still a place to be.

But it’s more than just a straight passive income play.

It’s a growth in income play because demand is going to continue to skyrocket.

Now, what do you think special about this company?

Is there anything that sort of, if you look at that and you look at Duke, I mean, is there any reason that this thing outperforms the rest of them or did they just have a-

Well, it’s, you know, the old adage about real estate, you know, you know, what’s the best thing about real estate is location, location, location.

And, you know, Vistra is, is, you know, kind of located in areas where they’re the service provider, where there is huge demand and there’s big AI in demand and there’s huge data center demand.

And that’s only going to continue to grow.

And typically those areas are Texas.

You know, there’s a ton of data, data farms around the Washington DC area.

And so anybody that’s located near those is just killing it.

But to have a utility stock almost double the performance of NVIDIA, an AI stock, that’s truly an astonishing thing for people to get their arms wrapped around.

Well, my opinion on this is going to be for everybody, sounds like it’s a great company, but whenever something is up by that percentage, I would sell some or all of it.

It’s too good to be true.

Well, at this level, I mean, you know, having covered it for years, I’d almost be more inclined now to buy Dominion or to buy Duke over Vistra just because of the huge move.

Right.