What is Super-Spiked by Arjun Murti?
Super-Spiked is a newsletter focused on the mission of everyone on Earth someday becoming energy rich and what that would mean for corporate strategy and energy & environmental policy, markets and commodities. This is not an investment newsletter and no financial advice will be given, explicitly or implicitly. It reflects 100% my own, strongly-held views based on a 33 year career researching and analyzing global energy markets.
Who am I?
I was the Goldman Sachs “Super Spike” analyst from the 2000s commodity bull market era. I retired as a partner in 2014 after 22 years as a sell- and buy-side energy equity research analyst at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Investment Management, and Petrie Parkman & Co. I have since stayed active as an advisory board member at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and at ClearPath, as a board member of a large Houston-based E&P company, and as a senior advisor at a private equity firm. In March 2023, I un-retired to join Veriten, an energy research, strategy, and investing firm whose mission is “truth in energy.” Super-Spiked is written in my name and as part of my work at Veriten. Nothing I write should be attributed to any other affiliation I have, past or present. I am American so undoubtedly have the biases and perspectives that come with this great country that I have been truly blessed to have been born, raised, and live.
Why did I start Super-Spiked?
Throughout my career analyzing global energy markets, I have found mainstream media, governments, NGOs, think tanks, and institutional investor narratives often badly miss the mark on what drives energy markets and prices. The world is currently hyper-focused on addressing climate change via a transition away from fossil fuel-based energy. The transition, in my view, is not on-track to go well as we head for a worst of all world’s outcome via spiking energy prices that hurt consumers without any appreciable change to our CO2 trajectory.
It doesn’t have to be this way. A messy transition hurts everyone, in particular the least fortunate among us. I have some views on how it could go better! I love capitalism. I hate socialism. I prefer limited government. But I am against anarchy and crony capitalism, meaning a certain amount of government and regulation is needed.
A big part of my motivation to start Super-Spiked comes from my deep disdain for partisan politics. The political left and right (USA), in particular, often create false binaries that mis-inform the public, unfortunately amplified by non-energy experts in the media. This newsletter is not about supporting one side or the other.
I am also highly motivated by my aversion to the corresponding rigid, single-issue ideologues that are currently the loudest voices on energy transition. I dedicate Super-Spiked to the billions of people that are currently energy poor. Energy availability and affordability is a fundamental human right and the world is nowhere near where it should be in providing affordable, available energy for all. In my view, we will never address climate change without first, or at least simultaneously, ending energy poverty.
Who is Super-Spiked for?
Super-Spiked is for everyone that has an interest in energy, which should be all of humanity. My writing is geared toward my current Veriten and former Goldman Sachs client base, government and public policy leaders, and energy sector executives. With that said, I do hope anyone with an interest in this topic will find this newsletter accessible, illuminating, and entertaining. Whether you agree or not with anything I write is a wholly different matter. I am not trying to convince you that I am right and you are wrong; I am simply trying to share my observations based on my career and life experiences. I don’t take myself as seriously as you probably think I do, so relax and constructively engage.
Analyst certification
Like anything on the Internet, read with skepticism and assume this author has real or perceived conflicts of interest. However, my analyst certification to you is that everything I write 100% reflects my strongly held personal views at the time of the original posting. I write on no one’s behalf except my own.
Regards,
Arjun
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