you can’t keep the energy sector down that’s the message from strategists at evercore who upgraded those stocks to overweight from neutral and cited several tailwinds for that newfound confidence in a note to clients on sunday “energy is bolstered by a us economy still expected to grow european conflict a newly weakening us dollar and a china expected to end ‘zero covid’ in early 2023” said a team of strategists led by julian emanuel evercore isi’s chief equity and quantitative strategist note their call came amid tumbling oil prices to start the week with both us cl1 and benchmark international brent prices brn00 dropping 4 after disappointing economic data from china the central bank of the world’s numbertwo economy cut its key rate on monday as the economy struggles to recover from pandemic lockdowns oil prices have managed to gain 23 so far this year though the commodity has been under pressure as the third quarter kicked off the energy sector represents 42 of the sp 500 spx  and based on aggregated net income is a 106 chunk earnings are expected to contract 16 in 2023 with a forward valuation of 85 times versus 181 times for the sp 500 according to evercore analysis “the ‘bar’ for energy is set low very low” said emanuel and the team consisting of 21 companies the sp 500 energy sector is tracked by the energy select sector spdr fund xle  up 41 so far this year and 12 in the latest quarter the sp meanwhile is down 10 but up more than 12 in the latest quarter evercore has screened for what they call “energized energy” stocks names from the russell 3000 index rua with high short interest that are down more than that index from the highs with positive 2023 earnings per share revisions since the end of the second quarter names on that list include coterra energy ctra  haliburton  conocophilips cop  schlumberger slb and marathon oil mro  here’s their full list evercore also recommends going long the spdr sp oil  gas exploration  production xop  read oil prices are down but energy companies’ earnings estimates keep rising these stocks are cheap