Four oil stocks to purchase for portfolio protection provide some safety with companies that have showed survival skills through past market turbulence.
The four oil stocks to purchase for portfolio protection each also pays a sweet dividend. The payment of income can combine with any capital appreciation from the rise in the share price to boost total return for an investment.
When some sectors or industries lose favor with investors, others can gain popularity. An often-recommended strategy is to diversify holdings to avoid having too much money invested in any one sector.
Four Oil Stocks to Purchase for Portfolio Protection: EPD
One of the fans of energy stocks and funds at the current time is Mark Skousen, PhD, who recommended a high-income, dividend-paying investment years ago that I bought and still own. I scaled back some of my stock holdings in recent weeks, but opted to keep Skousen’s long-term recommendation, Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD).
EPD currently offers a dividend yield of 6.62% and most recently paid a quarterly dividend of 54.5 cents per share on Oct. 31. The total return for EPD so far this year is 10.87% and it showed recent strength by rising 7.91% in the past month along. As other sectors weaken, dividend-paying oil stocks seem to be rebounding.
Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com.
Skousen heads the Forecasts & Strategies investment newsletter and co-leads the Fast Money Alert trading service with Jim Woods, a seasoned stock picker. Woods also recommends EPD in his Investing Edge newsletter. Skousen and Woods also team up to recommend stocks and options in their Fast Money Alert advisory service.
EPD is a long-time holding in Forecasts & Strategies. When Skousen sees a stock he likes for his newsletter, he often stays with it, and EPD is one clear example.
Mark Skousen co-leads Fast Money Alert.
Four Oil Stocks to Purchase for Portfolio Protection: XOM
Jim Woods, a seasoned stock picker who leads the Investing Edge newsletter, also is recommending ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) for the publication’s Income Multipliers portfolio that also includes EPD. Worldwide oil industry giant Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) operates in more than 56 countries globally, with 61,000 scientists, engineers, researchers, technicians, professionals and other employees.
The company’s size and capabilities have been cited by Woods, who chose the stock for the Income Multiplier portfolio in Investing Edge. The stock pays a “great dividend” and boasts a double-digit-percentage gain so far this year, he added.
Exxon Mobile offers a 3.41% dividend yield and is up 12.62% so far in 2025, as well as 3.53% in the past month. Woods is far from the only one who likes the prospects for XOM.
Jim Woods heads the Investing Edge newsletter.
“Over the last 25 years, XOM’s dividend has averaged a growth rate of 6.4%,” said Michelle Connell, who heads Dallas-based Portia Capital Management. “Despite the pullback in oil prices, I don’t expect this dividend growth rate to decrease. XOM has a very powerful portfolio of strategic assets. One asset is their oil reserves in Guyana. These reserves can be drilled with relatively low cost, thereby increasing XOM’s cash flow significantly.”
Another key asset is XOM’s natural gas reserves, Connell continued. 40% of the electricity generated in the United States is powered by natural gas, she added.
“Data centers require a significant amount of electricity to be operational,” Connell counseled. “In the next three years, data centers are expected to demand 3.5 times the amount of electricity that they’re utilizing now. XOM will be able to profit from this new requirement.”
Michelle Connell heads Portia Capital Management.
A diverse asset portfolio has allowed XOM to reduce its costs to compensate for declining revenues associated with lower oil prices, Connell said. She forecast that the company’s operating margins would remain stable at about 9%.
“This backdrop will be good for energy investors interested in dividends and/or capital appreciation,” Connell counseled.
Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com.
Four Oil Stocks to Purchase for Portfolio Protection: COP
ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), given a buy rating by Citi Research, offers a current dividend yield of 3.61% that income investors should appreciate. COP has dropped 2.89% in 2025 but jumped 6.88% in the past month. Investors seeking to buy when the stock is on the rise can do so now.
Connell, based in oil rich Texas, called Conoco Phillips a “solid energy company” that is expanding its international liquid gas (LG) portfolio. She said it is a holding for some of the clients who helps through Portia Capital Management. COP has particularly strong fundamentals, she added.
“When they announced their latest earnings on Nov. 6, they reiterated that they’ll be adding an additional $7 billion in free cash flow between now and 2029,” Connell counseled. “These monies will be the result of an expanding international liquid natural gas (LNG) portfolio and the Willow project, an oil production facility in Alaska.”
In the same Nov. 6 earnings announcement, COP increased its dividend by 8% and reiterated a goal of retiring $6 billion of the company’s shares, Connell continued. Through November, the company had retired $4 billion in stock. Embedded in the $6 billion share retirement is the company’s desire to retire the shares issued for its acquisition of Marathon Oil over the next few years, she added.
COP’s increasing free cash flow reflects an energy company with solid fundamentals, Connell told me. The company’s dividend yield is supported by increasing free cash flow and declining share count. Connell said she expects COP’s dividend yield to increase substantially in the years ahead.
Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com.
Four Oil Stocks to Purchase for Portfolio Protection: BP
BP Ltd. (NYSE: BP) also is a buy, according to a recent research note by Citi Research. A key reason is that the company’s investments in Brazil and Russia may have value yet to be unlocked.
Citi Research gave pros and cons of those international opportunities. Bears variously focus on the risks of financial leverage, the need for debt-repair through asset sales and the prospect that a Bumerangue discovery in Brazil is not as commercially relevant as it seems. However, Citi Research wrote that “these risks are overstated” and, most importantly, that Bumerangue is “far more valuable” than the market perceives.
First, it is important to note that the company has strung together two to three good quarters of earnings in 2025 to show a positive financial reversal, Citi Research wrote. Improved earnings help with leverage, the investment firm added.
Even without the potential BP sale of lubricants provider Castrol, the risk to the stock is nowhere near a level that we would be associated with “stress,” Citigroup wrote. Without stress, BP should not be considered a forced seller on Castrol, the investment firm concluded.
“The Bumerangue discovery in Brazil has all the potential of being a game-changer,” Citi Research opined.
Expect a resources assessment of the field to be published in early 2026, an event that could lead to the market pricing some of the $10 billion-plus value the asset may hold that the market mostly has not factored into its valuation of BP’s share price.
As for Russia, geopolitics will dictate the outcome, but BP still has exposure in the region. Nominally, there is “$12-15 billion of value” sitting there, and it may well become clearer in 2026 whether this value can be accessed, Citi Research wrote.
Chart courtesy of www.stockcharts.com.
Four Oil Stocks to Purchase for Portfolio Protection: Geopolitical Risk
A new U.S. National Security Strategy released by the Trump administration indicated that ending the Russia-Ukraine war is a “core interest” for the United States. However, doing so remains a huge and challenge with Trump officials expressing that European leaders have “unrealistic expectations” for how it could end.
The document outlines core principles of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, with a goal of negotiating an “expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.” The Trump administration seeks to “stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.”
President Trump and his diplomats keep trying to forge a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine, the country whose sovereign territory has been invaded, has been told by Russia it would need to relinquish some of its land to the aggressor. Such proposals in the past have been unpopular with the Ukrainian people, who have sacrificed greatly to defend their freedom and protect themselves against Russia.
Claims to the contrary by Russia’s leaders belie the reality of increased prosperity for the countries that have the greatest freedom. Mark Skousen, PhD, who also is the Doti-Spogli Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University in Orange County, California, is a free-market economist who travels the world to praise freedom as a key to opening opportunities for prosperity across the globe.
War continues in Ukraine nearly four years after Russia invaded the neighboring nation. President Trump has advocated for other countries to negate Russia’s war machine by boycotting its oil. The idea has gained support, but not enough to end the war.
Russia’s miliary strikes keep killing children, women and elderly civilians in Ukraine with little apparent regard for human life. Thus far, Russia’s leaders have opted for a protracted war, not prosperity aided by new trade agreements that President Trump is proposing to stop the killing that he proclaims never should have happened.
Paul Dykewicz, www.pauldykewicz.com, is an accomplished, award-winning journalist who has written for Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, the Journal of Commerce, Seeking Alpha, GuruFocus and other publications and websites. Paul is the editor of StockInvestor.com and DividendInvestor.com, a writer for both websites and a columnist. He further is the editorial director of Eagle Financial Publications in Washington, D.C., where he edits monthly investment newsletters, time-sensitive trading alerts, free e-letters and other investment reports. Paul previously served as business editor of Baltimore’s Daily Record newspaper. Paul also is the author of an inspirational book, “Holy Smokes! Golden Guidance from Notre Dame’s Championship Chaplain,” with a foreword by former national championship-winning football coach Lou Holtz. Follow Paul on Twitter @PaulDykewicz.
