Energy

Hands up folks, who had Exxon Mobil (XOM) to be inside the top-ten S&P 500 performers at the start of the year? Well, that’s where it is; up around 30% year-to-date, the oil giant finds itself in 5th or 6th spot at time of writing. Sure, the year is still young, and there’s plenty of time for that to change, but few would begrudge Exxon…

Exxon Mobil (XOM) stockholders have been put through the wringer in recent years. COVID and 2020 speak for themselves, but the stock largely went sideways in the years before the pandemic too. Those years include two oil price crashes and a massive bull market in equities, not that Exxon participated in the latter. Indeed, it’s been a pretty wretched era for the stock. Still, big…

I last covered ConocoPhillips (COP) in the early days of the second quarter. Suffice to say, the stock has not shifted much on the price front in the intervening period. Its shares traded for around $32.90 back then, while they currently change hands for around $32.35. That rather disappointing performance comes despite oil prices rallying from $25 per barrel to around $40 per barrel over…

Exxon Mobil (XOM) surely wins the prize for most unloved mega-cap right now. Market sentiment is horrid, and for good reason. The price of oil remains way down on its pre-pandemic level, while conditions downstream are bad as well. All of that at a time when Exxon wanted to ramp up capital spending too. As a consequence, cash flow has been seriously squeezed and its…

I have held back on talking about Exxon Mobil (XOM) stock during this crisis. That isn’t because I take a negative view on its investment prospects, although I appreciate that may sound crazy in the current environment. Having been optimistic when it traded at $70 a share, it stands to reason I think it is a long-term steal right now at around the $42 per share…