Stephen Ellis is an energy and utilities strategist for Morningstar Research Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc., covering midstream companies. Ellis is also a member of Morningstar’s China Economic Committee, which provides research on the long- term outlook for the Chinese economy.Before assuming his current role in 2017, he was director of equity research for financial services and a senior equity analyst. He is also a former editor of the Morningstar Opportunistic Investor newsletter and a former member of the Economic Moat Committee, a group of senior members of the equity research team responsible for reviewing all Economic MoatTM and Moat TrendTM ratings issued by Morningstar.Prior to joining Morningstar in 2007, he worked as a freelance analyst for The Motley Fool and spent three years working in project and financial analysis for Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), a supplier of geographic information system software and geodatabase management applications.He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Redlands.