Status Update: Midstream Green In September

After a rough end to the summer with back-to-back negative months, midstream bounced back in September with a 2.0% gain.

Canadian midstream was strong, while MLPs lagged, a trend that\'s been persistent for about a year now.

MLPs finished 3Q down 5.0%, including distributions, and are down 8.1% year over year.

Given the end of the month and quarter fell on a Monday, I wanted to get a quick post out with updated month- and quarter-end numbers. I hope you'll understand if the upcoming weekly post is a bit shorter as a result.

After a rough end to the summer with back-to-back negative months, midstream bounced back in September with a 2.0% gain. Canadian midstream was strong, while MLPs lagged, a trend that's been persistent for about a year now.

For the full quarter that's now in the books, the midstream index finished down 1.9%, including distributions, offsetting a slightly positive 2Q. The SPDR S&P Oil & Gas E&P ETF (NYSEARCA:XOP) dropped 17.7% in the quarter, so being down less than 2% with a group of stocks involved in the fossil fuel business should feel pretty good. But by comparison, the UTY was up 8.4% without including dividends and the S&P 500 was positive.

Looking ahead to October, the AMNA index has been down 4%+ in each of the last 3 years in October, including last year's 6.8% pummeling that kicked off a horrible 4Q for the sector.

The MLP Index finished slightly positive for September (+0.7%), a small bounce back from sharp declines in August. MLPs finished 3Q down 5.0%, including distributions, and are down 8.1% year over year. MLPs are still up double-digits YTD with 11.1% return.

In recent years, 4Q has not been kind to MLPs, due to a combination of tax-loss selling, weak commodity price action and risk-off mood in the broad market. The AMZ has posted negative returns in 4 of the last 5 fourth quarters, with average returns of -6.3%. 2016 was the last positive 4Q for the AMZ, and that was just a 2% gain.

MLPs have been negative in each of the last 3 Octobers, but even still October returns historically have been the best among the three months of the fourth quarter, with average returns over 23 years of 1.4%. Last year's -8.0% return was the worst ever for MLPs.

Original post

Editor's Note:

The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.