The two halves of energy are diverging by 21 points — integrated majors at 70, pure-play E&P at 49, with integrated majors leading. WTI is at $75.61, -20.5% over 30 days — a sharp move down. Crude inventories are in the lower quartile of the 5-year range — modestly supply-tight. Refining margins are favorable for refiners and clean energy is sharply rotating in. M&A activity has quieted.
US commercial crude stocks vs the 5-year band for this week of the year. The band respects seasonality — stocks build in spring, draw down through summer driving season. Sourced from EIA's Weekly Petroleum Status Report.
Three signals beyond the spot price. Crack spread tells you what refiners are earning. Storage deviation tells you nat-gas demand vs norm. HY spread tells you whether smid E&P can borrow cheaply. Pulled live from macroread.com.
How the equity market is voting on each side of the sector. The two halves don't always agree — when they don't, that's the signal. Read more about bifurcation →
How the two gauges have moved over 90 days. Wide gaps between the lines are the bifurcation thesis at work — that's the signal. Hover any point for that day's reading.
All 45 tickers grouped by basket, colored by 30-day performance. Green = outperformer, red = laggard. Hover any cell for the exact return.
Solar, fuel cells, and renewables-utility hybrids trade as energy on every exchange — but their drivers are rates and policy, not oil. Tracked as a relative-performance strip vs XLE so the rotation in/out is visible without conflating it with traditional energy sentiment.
Big oil's view of independent E&P, drawn from SEC 8-K filings from the 15-name majors basket. Classified into completions (Item 2.01 = closed deals) vs agreements (Item 1.01-only, non-noise). Routine refiner 8-Ks (item codes 2.02, 2.03, etc.) are filtered out.
Scheduled events that move oil prices and energy stocks: OPEC+ ministerial dates (curated from opec.org) plus the auto-generated EIA weekly reports every Wednesday and Thursday at 10:30 AM ET.
Why this site has two gauges instead of one — explored in three parts.
Integrated majors
XOM, CVX, COP and the supermajors have refining, chemicals, and downstream marketing baked in. Earnings smooth out the commodity cycle — when crude crashes, refining margins often expand. They pay sustainable dividends and trade like value stocks during oil weakness.
Pure-play E&P and services
FANG, EOG, SLB and the pure-plays are essentially leveraged bets on the oil price. When WTI drops 10%, they drop more. No downstream cushion to soften the move. This gauge tracks how much investors are pricing in commodity-driven upside.
The bifurcation problem
"Energy stocks are in greed" tells you nothing about which energy stocks. E&P caught a bid on a Middle East headline? Majors got bought for dividend yield as rates fell? Different stories, different next moves. Two gauges expose which.
What people ask before they trust a sentiment number.