Since the turn of the year, energy stocks have become a put owner’s dream–what with the energy sector virtually generating the worst returns of all US sectors. And the harder you look, the worse it gets, making it nearly impossible to find value in this gridlocked mess. One of the industry’s popular benchmarks, the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration ETF (XOP) has tanked 30% over the past year, , badly underperforming the broader market all thanks to a perfect storm of supply and demand shocks coupled with slowing economies. This comes to nobody’s surprise, considering that small-cap oil and gas stocks have higher leverage than large-caps. XOP invests in a lot of highly leveraged small-and mid-cap oil and gas companies in the exploration sector that tend to decline significantly on concerns about liquidity and debt repayments, but also bounce back quickly due to supply shocks like the Saudi […]