Jimmy Mengel,
Director of Customer Experience
Sept. 11, 2026
I remember precisely where I was 25 years ago today…
I was coming out of my college biology lab, totally oblivious to the fact that the innocence and essence of our very lives had been completely upended. As I left the building on what was a sunny, picturesque day, I was bombarded with utter panic – a sea of professors and students running wildly to their cars and dorms; a maddening scrum of crying, bellowing and confusion.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked a stunned passerby.
Plane crash!
Buildings on fire!
Terrorists heading to the White House!
Nothing could have prepared me for the grim reality I was heading into.
If you were alive on September 11th, 2001, I’m certain that you remember this all too well. It’s a day permanently stained into our collective memory. A day that changed America – and the world – forever.
Almost half of Americans describe 9/11 as the single-most important historic event in their lifetime, according to a new Ipsos poll. To put that in perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic was a distant second at 31% – and that catastrophe is still quite fresh in our minds.
But before the country could fully recover from the human and psychological horror, we had to come to grips with the economic turmoil.
When the New York Stock Exchange closed on September 10, our markets were already reeling from the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Markets were already down 27% from the March 2000 high. When markets reopened a week after the attacks, things immediately got worse. The S&P 500 fell 5% in one day and lost over 11% in the following weeks.
The geopolitical shock had everyone bracing for oil prices to skyrocket.
But then something very unexpected happened. In fact, the very opposite happened…
Oil prices did briefly rise, but prices fell far faster than anyone expected. With everyone scared to leave their homes – and understandably terrified to fly – air travel basically came to a halt and demand for jet fuel dropped. The global price of oil fell from $25 a barrel before the attacks to about $18 by the end of November 2001.
But the price of oil was perhaps the least significant effect the attacks had on the energy market. Our reliance on Middle Eastern oil caused a deep shift into American energy independence. Considering 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, it was no doubt there would be a chilling effect on those oil-dependent relationships.
You may remember the famous speech where President George W. Bush declared that "America is addicted to oil." The President made a clear link between energy dependence and national security. He set a target of replacing more than 75% of Middle East oil imports by 2025.
Fast forward two decades and his bold predictions proved prescient. Last year, the United States produced a record 13.6 million barrels of crude oil a day and was the world's single-largest oil producer. We can thank the shale revolution for that.
They say that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Here we are, 25 years after 9/11 and we are facing an eerily similar set of circumstances. The specter of soaring oil prices? Check. The insidious invectives of political division? Check. Another war in the Middle East with no end in sight? Check.
As far as energy policy goes, we are in uncharted territory. We’ve already played our shale oil hand. The Council on Foreign Relations just declared, “The U.S.-Led Middle East Order Is Over”. We are at war with Iran in part because of the proliferation of nuclear technology.
But one thing that was largely forgotten from President Bush’s oil addiction speech was the final method he mentioned: nuclear energy.
In a bizarre twist of fate, instead of the US relying on Saudi Arabia for oil, the Saudi government is seeking America’s technological help in building a nuclear civilian program. In July, Saudi Arabia and the United States signed a Section 123 Agreement allowing such a deal to take place.
While the deal still has to be approved by Congress, it does go to show how much has changed since those planes hit the Twin Towers.
Oil addiction be damned; we are now entering a new nuclear age…
Recent executive orders signed by President Trump have prioritized uranium production and nuclear energy expansion, streamlining regulations and declaring a national energy emergency to accelerate domestic energy independence and national defense.
In January of this year, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $2.7 billion in contracts to three companies to boost domestic enrichment capacity over the next decade. To put that in perspective, roughly half of the world’s uranium production is represented by roughly $64 billion in market cap.
The supply simply cannot keep up with the creeping demand.
Private capital and government capital are getting in on the action. Major banks, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, back initiatives to triple nuclear capacity by 2050, reinforcing its role in this new energy transition.
Aside from energy security risks, the AI revolution will be powered by this nuclear renaissance. Corporations like Google, Meta and Amazon are racing to secure long-term nuclear power supplies to support their AI and data-center ambitions.
All of this will require more and more uranium.
There are three forces converging on uranium at the same moment, all of them landing on the same small group of federally-positioned producers. That convergence is the power of massive government contracts, billions of big bank investment dollars and a complete reliance on nuclear power from the largest companies in the world.
The winners of this convergence? Early investors in domestic uranium producers. They hold the key to the next stage of US energy dependence.
Our own Gerardo Del Real has been scouting intel about the companies that are working covertly to provide the much-needed supply.
In his new dispatch – “The Third Convergence Event: Three Uranium Stocks That Could Turn A Small Stake Into A Fortune” – Gerardo unveils three names, three tickers, and a full dossier on each company along with his recommended buy range.
You can get a peek behind the curtain right here.
Godspeed,
Jimmy Mengel
Director of Customer Experience, Bizarro World