I skipped my research over a gas shortage. I still don’t know if I was right.

Late winter 2022. I saw headlines in the news about gas and oil shortages around the world. That was a huge shortage, with many countries involved. Millions of people needed energy. Whole industries could stop working. Four years later, one stock I bought during that shortage had nearly doubled.

Europe was one of the places hit hardest. I realized: the gas and oil supply is usually limited, by price, production capacity, infrastructure and logistics.

A major gas supplier’s output to Europe dropped, but Europe still needed the gas. Someone still had to ship gas there. US companies could ship it. It looked so obvious to me that I didn’t even apply my typical research process. I only needed to find a company with already established infrastructure and routes, so it would only need to scale, not build the infrastructure from scratch. That company would benefit the most from it.

I searched online for “biggest US companies to export gas”. There were many companies directly extracting gas or oil, fewer doing transportation, and only a few exporting on a large scale. One of the largest exporters was Cheniere Energy, and it was popping out ahead of the others. This company didn’t extract the gas, they only converted it into liquid form, stored it, and exported it to clients. That checked all my requirements, and what was more important, Cheniere Energy only needed to scale its export.

The scale would increase the company revenue. Because the infrastructure was already built, more of that revenue would turn into profit instead of getting spent on expansion, which meant margins, how much of each dollar of revenue turns into profit, would grow too. That growth would attract more investors who would buy the stock. That would move the price higher. I figured if I invested earlier, before other investors recognized this opportunity, I could benefit the most.

I was so convinced I didn’t do any further research. Why would I need to? It was already clear. I spent a fraction of time researching this opportunity that I had spent on other investments, like Nvidia or Antero Midstream. On February 26, 2022 everything in my portfolio was red, but I still placed an order for almost $100 at $133.85 per share.

Over time, the company kept increasing its gas exports, so the stock kept rising slowly. I thought that was a clear sign demand wasn’t going anywhere. Why would I stop now? I figured I could keep investing and keep tracking how the company was doing, and once I noticed exports starting to slow, or signs of new supply coming from news, I could sell. Over the next 8 months, I invested almost $700 toward Cheniere Energy. Every time I bought, I checked first if the shortage was still a thing. Exports didn’t slow. So instead of selling, I still hold it.

For years later

My investment nearly doubled. I later learned this had a name: macro investing, betting on global economic or political changes rather than one company’s fundamentals. Not the currency version professionals trade, but the same idea, applied to a single stock.

Every other investment I had made took me two evenings of research first. This one came from a search online and confidence I couldn’t fully explain. It worked. This time. I still don’t know if I’d trust it again without doing the research first.