Global Energy Shocks and Energy Security: A Conversation with Yasser Elguindi

In this episode of Forthlane Features, Vanessa Hui and Anthony Berg sit down with Yasser Elguindi, Partner and Co-Portfolio Manager at Westbeck Capital.

With three decades of experience as an oil market strategist, Yasser brings a deep, real-time perspective to one of the most consequential energy shocks in recent history. 

Drawing on his experience at the centre of global energy markets, Yasser breaks down the escalation in the Middle East, the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, and why, in his view, markets may be underestimating both the magnitude and duration of the disruption. 

He explains how oil markets rebalance under stress, what it would take to force demand destruction, and why price remains the ultimate signal in energy.

Looking beyond the current crisis, Yasser challenges the concept of peak oil demand and outlines a structural bull case for energy, driven by years of underinvestment and a global shift toward energy security.

Whether you are an investor or simply trying to make sense of the headlines, this conversation offers a clear framework for understanding one of the most important forces shaping the global economy today.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

3:29 What is really happening in the Strait of Hormuz and why is it the biggest oil shock in decades?

8:15 How long could this disruption last and what does it mean for the global economy?

17:12 At what price level does oil begin to destroy consumer demand and trigger a recession?

30:02 Is peak oil demand a myth, and what do demographics tell us about energy's future?

GUEST: YASSER ELGUINDI, CO-PORTFOLIO MANAGER | PARTNER, WESTBECK ENERGY OPPORTUNITY FUND

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CONNECT WITH ANTHONY BERG, SENIOR INVESTMENT ANALYST, FORTHLANE PARTNERS

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CONNECT WITH VANESSA HUI, SENIOR CLIENT ADVISOR, FORTHLANE PARTNERS

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This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Views expressed are those of the speakers and should not be relied upon for investment decisions.

Transcript

Vanessa Hui (00:09):

Welcome to another episode of Forthlane Features, a podcast where we dive into the world of global wealth and asset management. I'm Vanessa Hui, senior client advisor at Forthlane Partners. And today I'm joined by my partner, Anthony Berg, Senior Investment Analyst for a very timely conversation. Today we have Yasser Elguindi, partner and co-portfolio manager of Westbeck's Energy Opportunity Fund. Thank you so much for joining us, Yasser.

Yasser Elguindi (00:40):

Thanks for having me.

Vanessa Hui (00:42):

Before we dive in, just for listeners context, Wesbeck is one of the specialist managers within Forthlane's Real Asset Fund. Forthlane's Real Assets Fund provides diversified exposure to precious metals, commodities, and energy, and is really designed to help protect portfolios and inflationary environments when traditional assets struggle. Yasser, can you start with a quick overview of Westbeck and the Energy Opportunities Fund?

Yasser Elguindi (01:11):

Sure. Happy to. Yeah. Westbeck Capital, we consider ourselves energy experts. We have several strategies at play. The particular strategy I'm on, we really are looking for opportunities in the crude oil future space. That's where we spend most of our time. We have long pushed back against some of the negative narrative on the oil markets, and we've been able to take advantage of that. We have a Volta fund as well that looks at energy transition themes, although as you will come to learn, we don't necessarily like that word. But yes, anything that has to do with electrification, we believe that demographics favor energy consumption of all sorts, and we are going to need all-

Vanessa Hui (02:04):

It's not every day that I get to speak with someone who has spent over 20 years as an oil market strategist. Can you just share with us how you ended up specializing yourself in energy?

Yasser Elguindi (02:18):

Yeah. I mean, I wish I could tell you I had a grand plan, but it all sort of-

Vanessa Hui (02:24):

There's never a grand plan, right? That's

Yasser Elguindi (02:26):

Right. It was a confluence of things. All of my interests seem to align in this market. It's very political. It's very economic. And the trading aspect, of course, is fascinating. But yeah, the oil market is one of those rare places where it lies truly at the epicenter of markets and policymaking. So that's how I wound up in that space.

Anthony Berg (02:58):

So Yasser, let's jump right into the topic on everybody's binds right now, which is the conflict, of course, between the US and Iran that started in late February of this year. Could you just give us, as best as possible, a brief summary of what's happened over the last few weeks, how that's affected markets so far? And I'll just make a quick note for the audience that we're recording on March 19th at 10:00 AM Eastern. So given the situation's very fluid, things can always change between the time we record and the time we release.

Yasser Elguindi (03:29):

I think I will preface my comments by saying we are now entering the biggest and most consequential oil shock of my career, both personal and professional. I am old enough to remember gas lines in the '70s and what is happening today really dwarfs the magnitude of what happened back then. So I think it's important to put it within that context. As far as this specific episode, I don't know that we can say it started in late February. This is a continuation of several years of things building up. And in fact, back in October 2024, after Hamas attacked Israel, sent a note out to investors and effectively said this was a monumental tectonic shift in the region. And Israel has now decided that it can no longer live with the Islamic Republic of Iran and had made regime change a core part of its strategy. And at the time it was sort of, wow, okay, that's interesting.

(04:46):

But we really felt that we were leading up to a big moment in this confrontation, and it has slowly been escalating ever since. You have the attacks in 2025 and April 2025, the tit for tat bombings between Israel and Iran. And then in June when the US and Israel bombed Iran, it was a consequential event as well. And here we are again, as you said, in late February, we saw the start of something far more dramatic and basically the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran. What was different this time is there were no clear objectives that were laid out to the public in terms of what it is that the US necessarily wanted to accomplish. At first, it was regime change, but then that morphed into something else. And to this day, it's unclear exactly what it is that will allow the US and Israel to declare mission accomplished and start to return things back to normal in the straight.

(06:02):

But I think what's important for our purposes is that on the heels of these attacks, transit through the straight up hormones has come to a standstill. That represents about 20% of all global crude exports and additionally products and gas. I mean, there's a lot of focus on the oil market, but there's a lot of other things that go through the straight that basically are not moving. They're sitting on boats or in port waiting to be loaded. And so once the US launched these attacks in late February, and you have just started to see this series of escalations between the two sides, and I would argue that we are sort of in an uncontrolled escalation at the moment where both sides keep digging in and notably neither side feels that negotiation will improve their end result. Both sides believe that war actually brings them to a better result than a negotiation.

(07:10):

So that's where we are in terms of the conflict. Obviously for the oil market, we've seen incredible reaction, I would argue muted to these events, again, given how consequential the outage is at the moment, but critically for energy markets, I think the war has pushed oil prices sharply higher and it's disrupted the shipping through the straits and we really are on the cusp of a global energy crisis.

Anthony Berg (07:46):

Yeah. It's been interesting to see how volatile markets have been, but you mentioned that you think it's actually been muted. So what do you think would be the appropriate reaction to the conflict as it stands today? Just given where we are now, almost three weeks in and approaching the threshold where is this disruption temporary or is this going to cause a broader dislocation in the global economy?

Yasser Elguindi (08:15):

Well, this is the big question that everyone is trying to understand. At what point do we return to quote unquote normal? We can argue about what that normal looks like in the aftermath of all this. We'll get to that in a minute, but really what the markets are trying to discern and why you have this sort of encode reaction in different pricing centers is no one really knows how long this is going to last, again, partly because we don't have clearly defined goals and objectives that have been articulated at least. And so we started off and the president came out and said, "This is going to end soon." He said that two weeks ago, he repeated that last week, he has repeated it again this week, and it's become very clear from people who are coming in and out of the White House that there actually isn't a clearly defined way of ending this conflict.

(09:10):

I think the administration believed that they could pressure the Iranians into submission. And what has happened instead is the Iranians have decided facing certain annihilation, the regime, I think, correctly understands that the only way that they can ensure their survival and the only way that they can guarantee that the US and Israel don't attack again, as they have repeatedly for the last several years, is to effectively hold the rest of the world hostage by choking exports through the Strait of Hormuz. It's the only leverage they have. And so I think the realization from the Trump administration was that even if they do decide to unilaterally declare that they have won and they can send everyone home, there's no guarantee that the Iranians will stop. And so now the Gulf states are the ones who are bearing most of the brunt of the retaliation. We've seen energy assets specifically targeted by the IRGC, the Iranian, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, and we expect that to continue.

(10:28):

There's been very clear escalation. Every time something in Iran has been hit, they have responded in kind by attacking an asset, be it in the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or Oman. And Oman was their arbiter. Iman was the neutral party that the Iranians used to communicate with the rest of the world. So the gloves are off. And that's why I think we are now in this phase of uncontrolled escalation because we're stuck. I think the Trump administration cannot leave the situation as it is currently with the Iranians able to disrupt traffic through the strait. And getting the Iranians to succumb is going to require ever increasing means of coercion. So we've gone from, we're just going to have a few days of bombing, certainly no boots on the ground, to now weeks upon weeks of bombing. And supposedly a marine expeditionary force is on its way to the Gulf as we speak.

(11:34):

And there are suggestions that the US is now going to try to force the reopening of the straight, which means only more escalation. So it's a very, very precarious and dangerous time. And that's why we think prices should begin to reflect that this is likely going to last longer. We've sort of been on a 10 day to two week cycle where the markets have believed this is going to be over in 10 days, and then that gets pushed out another 10 days after 10 days, and now it's getting pushed out another 10 days. And so we understand that we're bracing. And obviously these things are very fluid and who knows when it will end. We certainly don't, but we think we have at least another three to five weeks of targeting by the US and Israel against Iranian assets, and they will be likely responding in kind.

(12:33):

And it could very well be that we will see a big confrontation in the Gulf at some point over that time period.

Anthony Berg (12:41):

It's a really helpful overview of where things stand today. If I back up a little bit and talk about Trump for a second, what do you think the motivation was to escalate in late February? When I think about a couple years back, the Drill Baby Drill campaign, which we've talked about offline a few times, but that doesn't really jive with causing a war that could incite global oil supply disruptions. So what do you think the motivation is there, especially with midterms coming up?

Yasser Elguindi (13:14):

Yeah, it's really an excellent question. And there is a reason why everyone that we knew was begging the president not to do this. All the Gulf states were desperately trying to facilitate some form of negotiation, obviously did not succeed, but there's a reason why all of these countries did not want to see a kinetic war that engulfed the whole region. So it's a great question then why, given his supposed desire for oil prices. All we heard about coming in as he took office was oil prices are coming down, drill baby drill. I think he wanted oil in the low 50s, and maybe we just got it backwards with Trump, meaning low oil prices weren't the end, but they were perhaps the means by which he could do other things that he wanted to do, his economic policy, all the inflationary impulses associated with it, but also his foreign policy.

(14:21):

When you think about what's happened in the last 12 months that he's a little over 12 months he's been in office, he's facilitated a coup in Venezuela, he has tightened sanctions against Russia, he has bombed Nigerian camps in attempt to do the things that they wanted to do. And now he's initiated a war with Iran that for all intents and purposes, most people probably believe it could have been avoided. So all of those things are bullish for oil prices. And maybe certainly if we can take a peek behind the veil in China, it would seem the Chinese had a good idea that maybe things were going to get a little dicey in the region because they have been stockpiling crude for the last 18 months, unexpectedly and without warning, and no one could really explain why all of a sudden it was borderline panic buying out of China over the last 12 months.

(15:33):

So maybe they knew. But yeah, I think maybe we had it slightly wrong that Trump needed lower oil prices so he could try to facilitate and do all the things they wanted to do with their foreign policy.

Anthony Berg (15:49):

Yeah. And it's interesting when you look at polls of the average citizen, inflation tends to be higher on the list of priorities than foreign policy. And yet, as you just discussed, there's several examples where he's taken a hawkish tone in foreign policy.

Yasser Elguindi (16:04):

Yeah, for sure. And there's all sorts of speculation about the timing of the Venezuela campaign with certain domestic issues that have troubled this administration for a while. It could very well be. It is definitely a head scratcher. And certainly if your ultimate goal was to reduce the price of oil for the US consumer, launching a war that brought the straight of war moves to a standstill is not high on my list of things to do.

Anthony Berg (16:38):

So if we shift gears a little bit to the scenario where this does become a prolonged conflict and oil prices do eventually rerate higher, even higher than they already have, which Brent's up 60% in the last month, you've talked about the demand destruction levels in some of your client letters, but maybe for the broader audience, just walk us through where does oil need to go to for us to see consumers pair back their spending and for the global economy to see a meaningful slowdown.

Yasser Elguindi (17:12):

Yeah. So I am a big believer in price because price tells everyone what to do, and that's a mantra that has guided my career. If price goes too high, it tells producers to produce more and it tells consumers to consume less, but also vice versa. If it is too low, it will compel producers to make less crude, but it'll also encourage consumption. And so we have never had an instance in the oil market where price has had to go to a level to stop consumption in real time. We had something similar that happened in the European gas markets a few years ago when the TTF price in Europe had to go to a level to destroy demand, specifically manufacturing demand across Europe because there wasn't enough gas.

(18:14):

And that was a massive shock to the system. Just by way of comparison, that was a $300 oil equivalent level for that price. We don't know what that price is in the oil market. I think a lot of people think $150 is sort of the price simply because in 2008, that's the price we got to, but demand did not collapse in 2008 because of the spike in price. Demand collapsed in 2008 because the credit markets imploded. And once tankers couldn't get letters of credit from banks to transact, everything came to a stop, to a halt, and demand collapsed and prices followed. Had we not had the credit event in 2008, prices would've gone significantly higher. I know Arjun Morti and a few others at Goldman were calling for $200 oil. It was bad timing on their part because oil prices collapsed shortly thereafter, but they were right.

(19:23):

If credit had not prevented demand from continuing to go up, we would've needed a significantly higher price than $150 to bring oil consumption to a standstill. And really what you have to ask is, what is the price that people in the United States will decide, "I'm not going to drive to work anymore. I'm going to try to take public transport, or I'm going to carpool," or, "We're not going to go on vacation because we can't afford it. " That's a really high price.

(20:02):

And so we've never experienced that, but for certain, as a starting point, we think $150 and with oil consumption, it's two things. It's the level at which it needs to go to destroy demand, but the question is, well, how much demand and for how long? If we have a little bit of runway for consumption, maybe we just need prices to go to a higher level and stay there for a period of three years and then people begin to change their habit. They sell their F-150 and they go and buy a Tesla or whatever. You have to change people's habit and for most people, because we see gasoline prices and the volatility every week, there's a belief that, yeah, prices are high now, but they'll come down eventually. And it's only after they've been high for a very long period of time that they begin to change their habit.

(20:57):

So as far as this disruption, I mean, look, we are already seeing extreme pricing in the physical market in certain places. So Dubai is trading at about $150 a barrel already. Seven cargoes converged on that price in the last week, which means somebody thought that was fair value. We have Angola and crude, which is now trading at a $20 premium to Brent, which is already at a $10 premium to WTI. Now, the reason why you have this wide disparity is because the White House and the US is intervening to try to keep prices from rising, to keep prices from spiking. We've seen the IEA wide SPR release, which was recently announced. They've also done things like wave the Jones Act, which is this really archaic but important for the maritime fleet ruling, which says you had to have a US owned, built, flagged, and operated ship to transport between two ports in the United States.

(22:07):

By waving this, you conceivably could have other tankers moving gasoline crude and other products between US and US port. They're going to waive certain regulations in terms of the cocktail used to make gasoline for consumption in the summer months, but these are all relatively cosmetic things. They certainly will not fill the supply gap for a straight that remains shut for the next three to five weeks. If two weeks from now, we are still asking when will the straight be reopened? I think prices will be significantly higher, probably converging with the Dubai price as opposed to the Dubai price falling down. And then the reason why it's hard to answer that question is we don't know how big the supply hole is yet because we don't know how long this thing is shut down for. If it's six weeks, eight weeks, then all bets are off.

(23:10):

We're definitely going to prices that will destroy the economy and destroy demand in real time.

Anthony Berg (23:18):

Yeah. So you touched on the differentials between different oil prices right now. We've seen WTI to Brent spread go from $4 to $16 as of today. Do you know if there are any implications for the Canadian oil market in all of this? We are Canadians here, Vanessa and I, and always curious about prices at the pump. So wondering if you have any readthroughs to WCS spreads, which is the Canadian benchmark that we would look at relative to global prices.

Yasser Elguindi (23:49):

Yes. So I mean, the way we can think about it is we are now going to see much higher prices for the foreseeable future. And I think maybe ... Well, let me address Canada first specifically, and then we'll talk about our broader views of how we're viewing oil on a multi-year horizon. But for Canada, obviously a bit constrained because of the quality of the crude and whether you can get it out to the open market or not. Certainly there are much better ways to facilitate the Canadian trade right now. And because a lot of the crude that would've come out of Hormuz, it's a broad mixture of all grades of crude, but certainly being able to source medium sour and heavy barrels will be at a premium given that you've had problems in Venezuela, you've had obviously all of the Gulf Arab production has been problematic.

(24:59):

So we think all the other places that have incremental supply that they can add to the market will be getting healthy premiums for that. So like I said, somebody thought $150 oil was fair value this week. And because the pricing is a little bit tethered to the US Gulf Coast, maybe that will have a delayed reaction, I guess is the best way to think about it because we do think WTI will eventually converge if we stay offline because that toolkit that the White House is using to try to keep prices tamped down, they're going through it and it's not unlimited. So at some point we think the price will have to begin to reflect the realities in a global market because it is a global oil market.

Anthony Berg (25:54):

And maybe one last question before we move beyond the current conflict, but could you just talk about the difference between actual oil prices, so the commodity and the equities? I know a few weeks back we talked about how you thought equities were already pricing in higher oil prices. So either oil prices needed to rise or the equities might've needed to fall. Since the conflict escalated late February, oil equities have outperformed broader indexes, but they're only up 6%-ish, whereas the commodity itself is up 50 to 60% depending on the benchmark you use. So curious your thoughts on the difference between those two instruments or two expressions of a similar theme.

Yasser Elguindi (26:36):

Sure. So the energy equities are always kind of different just because of people have such visceral reactions to the space. But as we were seeing the equities rally early in the year, while oil was underperforming, we started to see this strange phenomena whereby the share price kept going higher and higher and higher, but the earnings expectations kept falling and falling and falling. And that to us felt like a dichotomy. And we felt that the only way you could justify these higher share prices was through the oil price going up. So one of two things would have to happen. Either the oil price has to go up or the share price has to come down. And so we weren't very excited about the energy equity space. We can trade energy equities and we have historically when we found great valuation, but it's been a while since we've been trading in those names simply for liquidity reasons, but a whole host of other reasons.

(27:48):

I think historically, whenever you've had these types of supply shock scenarios, energy equities have tended to underperform. And the reason is because, as you know, equities are discounted future cashflow machines and they're not spot price trackers. So I think most people tend to believe that these price spikes are temporary and mean reversion is likely and companies will hedge and sell forward at lower prices. I mean, I'm still shocked that if you think about the companies that hedged their production a week ago, they did at $12 lower than where we are today and that number could grow. But anyway, so hedging dilutes the upside, you don't really capture it. And also once you have an oil price spike, cost inflation tends to follow. Therefore, yes, you might be getting a higher price, but it's going to eat into earnings through higher prices, higher inflation, so on and so forth.

(29:01):

So that's historically why the equities have underperformed during these types of shocks, but really it's a function of where you think fair value has recruit after that going forward, but I think that's why we've seen the relative underperformance in the last couple of weeks.

Anthony Berg (29:23):

That's very helpful. And you mentioned that fair value going forward. So if we look past the current conflict, let's assume we don't return to the previous status quo, but a new normal post-conflict. We've consistently heard this peak oil narrative and it consistently gets pushed back. And I know you alluded to it in the intro actually, but we've really seen an energy addition or energy additions rather than any sort of transition. Do you think the sun actually will set on the oil industry? And if so, So when would that actually happen?

Yasser Elguindi (30:02):

Yeah.

(30:03):

So there was a Saudi oil minister who used to famously say that the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones. It was technology. And so yes, I mean, there may come a day where technology makes huge strides and renders oil obsolete, but I don't think that's in my lifetime. I'm not even convinced it's in my children's lifetime. And as you just implied, I mean, the reality is there has never been an energy transition in human history. We still consume the same amount of biomass as a globe as we did 100, 150 years ago, despite the fact that we've added all these new sources of energy. It's been flat for almost a hundred years now. Despite the fact that we have had hundreds of years of coal production, oil consumption continues to go up. Coal consumption continues to go up. Despite the fact that we've had 60 years of gas consumption, hasn't put a dent in oil consumption.

(31:15):

Despite the fact that we've had, what, 40, 50 years of nuclear, hasn't put a dent in any of these other sources of energy. All we've done is add new sources of energy to maybe diversify our reliance on any one source, but the absolute volumes continue to go up, which is why we're so bullish on the energy space.

(31:42):

Demographics favor energy consumption. When you look at how the world is configured today, such a small proportion of the global population accounts for the vast majority of energy consumption. And there is a ... So you can think of it this way. There's about a billion people in the world who consume the vast majority of global energy today, and that's mostly in the developed world. But that means there's five billion plus people in the rest of the world who all they want to do is go up that GDP escalator. They want to grow their economies. They want to improve their standard of living. And we know that economic growth is energy transformed. You cannot have global economic growth without energy consumption. The two go hand in hand. There's no debating that. We can argue about which is the best source of energy, but it is a fact.

(32:43):

If you want to grow your economy, you have to consume energy. So there's a massive swath of low per capita consumers in the whole rest of the world that want to go up that GDP escalator. So that's why we're bullish on the energy space. And we think oil is going to fill a very important role for a big swath of that demographic, that low per capita consumer base, because oil is relatively cheap, it's easy, and it's reliable. And you know exactly what you're getting. You don't need massive investment in technology and other things or become wholly dependent on someone else for it. So if you need a hundred thousand barrels a day of diesel in the next decade or whatever, you can very easily get it. So the price point matters. And I think until we can bring down the costs of all these other sources of energy in a meaningful way and make it reliable, I think the big outcome of what's happened in the strait of hormones is we're moving from an era of energy, quote unquote, transition to a new era of energy security.

Vanessa Hui (34:03):

This has been such a insightful and incredibly informative conversation for me. And honestly, I think Anthony and I, we feel privileged that this is our day job to have these conversations. A question for you, Yasser, is for people that don't have the privilege of speaking with someone like you on the regular, any advice for how to just keep up with the headlines and how to make sense of all of the dynamics that you've talked about and the ever-changing tectonic shifts that we're experiencing, do you have a framework or a piece of advice that you can give to someone who's just trying to make sense of things?

Yasser Elguindi (34:42):

Wow. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately there's no ... We sort of live in this instant download culture where we want instant gratification. We have a question that needs to be answered immediately. And sometimes you just have to build a little bit of expertise and knowledge and take some time to understand a lot of the nuance. And it's really hard now, especially with ... You have almost too many sources of quote unquote information. You have a lot of noise. And so the best thing that I do is to filter the noise. So I focus on a handful of things and I never really take anything at face value. I do my own digging and I ask a lot of questions, and if something doesn't sound right, it probably isn't. And so you just have to keep asking those questions. But it's fast moving even for me, someone who's followed the industry for 30 years almost.

Vanessa Hui (35:45):

And finally, just one last question that I ask all of our guests on Fourth Lean Features. Is there one lesson you learned early on in your career that has stuck with you and continues to guide you today? I know you mentioned your mantra of prices tell everyone what to do, but is there a lesson that still guides you today?

Yasser Elguindi (36:01):

Yeah, I'll give two really quick ones. I think the one is more personal and the second one is definitely professional. But when I was in the 10th grade and I worked at a Chick-fil-A restaurant, that was my first job in high school. And my boss on my first day said, Yasser, there are times when I'm going to ask you to do unpleasant things, but I will never want to ask you to do something that I won't do or haven't done myself, like take out the garbage or clean the restroom or anything like that. And every week we would see this guy taking the garbage out of the restaurant. I mean, he could have been sitting in his office doing whatever, but he would do it as a point to lead by example. And so that's something I've always tried to do is lead by example.

(36:47):

And then the other issue that I think was really meaningful, I was a journalist right out of college. It was my first job and I had to do a really big interview with an oil minister and my boss at the time had told me, "Yasser, you cannot leave that interview without answering these three questions. Your job depends on it. " And I was like, "Got it, boss." And I was laser focused and I was taping the interview, so wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. And I kept trying to bring the conversation back to these three things that I wanted answered. And when I was reviewing the interview with my boss later, he stopped the interview at some point and he goes, "Why did you interrupt him there?" And I said, "What do you mean? You asked me to get these things." And he said, "He was trying to tell us something really important.

(37:42):

He was giving us scoop, big scoop." And I was like, "Oh my God." I was so focused on what I wanted. I wasn't listening to the signals that this guy was giving me. And so that I think was probably the most important lesson I learned, especially in a business where information is so important, make sure you're listening to what other people have to say, which is why you can go to an OPEC meeting and read a news article and you're like, "Were we at the same meeting?" Listening has definitely helped me to become a better analyst.

Anthony Berg (38:18):

That's a great lesson to take away. Yasser, we cannot thank you enough for coming on and joining us for so much of your time today. We learned a lot. I learned a lot just listening to you just now, and I think our audience will learn a lot listening to this as well. And I hope this was just a tip of the iceberg in terms of Yasser's knowledge on oil markets. He could have kept going for days if we had the time. So thank you, Yasser, so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Yasser Elguindi (38:56):

Thanks so much for having me. I've really enjoyed it.