2 Ways to Power Your Income Portfolio

On the Aug. 17, 2026, episode of The Morning Filter podcast, hosts Susan Dziubinski and Morningstar Chief US Market Strategist Dave Sekera discuss why Energy Transfer ET and Portland General Electric POR are top income stock picks today. Here is an excerpt from the show.

Is Energy Transfer Right for You?

Susan Dziubinski: Now this week, Dave has brought us four undervalued picks for income investors. Now, your first pick, Dave, is a master limited partnership. It’s Energy Transfer. Run through some of the key metrics on it.

Dave Sekera: Sure. Energy Transfer is a 4-star-rated stock, trades at about a 12% discount to our fair value estimate, and has a nice, healthy dividend yield at 6.5%. It’s a company we rate with a Medium

Again, just to note, and I think we’ve talked about this in the past with MLPs, very different tax implications as opposed to just buying a regular stock. For example, because it’s a limited partnership, you get what’s called a Schedule K-1 as opposed to a 1099. When you get that dividend payment, some of the payment might be classified as a return of capital, which has different tax implications than regular dividends. Like anything else, before you get involved in MLPs, just make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into here. Maybe talk to an investment advisor to determine whether or not it’s right for you.

Why Energy Transfer Remains a Favorite Income Pick

Dziubinski: Dave, why do you like Energy Transfer as an income opportunity today?

Sekera: As far as the MLPs go, I mean, Energy Transfer has really been one of our go-to picks for quite a while. I think the most recent that we recommended was November of 2025, but our recommendation on this stock goes back at least several years. Part of it is just because when you think about an MLP in the pipeline business, they make money on volume, not by passing through the higher prices. I like that stability in the business here.

Now, as far as Energy Transfer specifically, our team has, of course, talked about how data centers are being built. They all need more and more electricity. Artificial intelligence just requires multiple times more electricity than traditional computing. We’re having to build a lot of new power plants to supply that electricity. And of course, the power plants that are being built are mostly natural gas because they’re the quickest and easiest to build. In this case, we think Energy Transfer is one of the better-positioned pipelines to benefit from supplying natural gas to those new power plants that are going to end up powering the AI data centers.

Why Portland General Stands Out in an Expensive Utility Sector

Dziubinski: All right. Your final pick this week is a dividend stock. It’s Portland General Electric. Give us some of the key points about it.

Sekera: Portland is a 4-star-rated stock at a 9% discount, with a 4.2% dividend yield. It’s a Low Uncertainty with a narrow economic moat.

Dziubinski: Now, there are plenty of attractive dividend stocks out there. Why is Portland General your pick among them?

Sekera: Well, when you talk dividend stocks, you always have to have at least one utilities stock in there. People always think about utilities as kind of that fixed-income substitute with a stock as opposed to buying bonds outright or a bond fund or ETF. In this case with utilities, over time, you should also get kind of that expansion or growth in dividends as well. Whereas when you buy into fixed income, you’re locked in at that coupon price.

Now, as far as utility stocks go, utility stocks generally, as a sector, we think are pretty overvalued here. It’s hard to find many other undervalued stocks within the sector. This is one where I think it just got left behind the rest of the utility sector. In our mind, it’s not an AI data center play. I think that’s what the market is looking for: those kind of growth dynamics. The company reported earnings relatively recently. I read through our note, and there’s just nothing in that earnings report that changed our long-term investment thesis. I think this is probably one of those relatively boring stocks in a boring sector that people just don’t care about because it doesn’t have that growth story that you’re seeing elsewhere.

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