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So, everyone’s losing their minds over Occidental Petroleum. Why? Because some lines on a... So, everyone’s losing their minds over Occidental Petroleum. Why? Because some lines on a chart crossed, and the Oracle of Omaha might be writing another check. Give me a break.
I swear, you could draw a smiley face on a stock chart and if it happened after a three-day rally, some guru on TV would declare the "Happy Clown Formation" a surefire sign of bullish momentum. This time, it’s the “golden cross.” Sounds majestic, doesn't it? Like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The 50-day moving average crosses above the 200-day moving average. Ooooh. Ahhhh. The algorithm gods have spoken.
Let’s be real. Calling a golden cross a reliable indicator is like saying your horoscope is a solid financial plan. Sure, it can signal an uptrend. A broken clock is right twice a day, too. But the financial media is treating this technical blip on OXY’s chart like it’s the second coming.
And offcourse, it’s not just the chart voodoo. The real juice is the rumor that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is sniffing around to buy OXY’s chemical division, OxyChem, for a cool $10 billion.
Now that, at least, is something tangible. A number with a "B" next to it.
"Big Bang" or Just a Desperate Fire Sale?
The "Big Bang" Deleveraging Charade
This is the part of the story that actually matters, buried under all the noise about chart patterns. JPMorgan analyst Arun Jayaram called the potential sale a “big bang” approach to deleveraging. That’s some slick corporate-speak right there. Let me translate "big bang" for you: it means a desperate, Hail Mary pass to get out from under a mountain of debt.
We’re talking about a $24 billion debt burden. That’s not a small hole; it’s a financial crater. Selling OxyChem for $10 billion would certainly help, slashing their leverage ratio by a "full turn," according to the analysts. It’s like selling the family silver to pay off your gambling debts. You might be solvent tomorrow, but you’re still out the silver.
This is classic Wall Street misdirection. No, 'misdirection' is too polite—it’s a magic trick. They want you to look at the flashy golden cross and the Buffett mystique. Look at the shiny objects! Don't look at the crushing debt that’s forcing the company to even consider this move in the first place.
And the timing? Jayaram himself pointed out that they’d be selling while chemical margins are near “cycle lows.” They’re monetizing the asset during a trough. They're selling a solid asset, OxyChem, with its 23 plants and decent revenue, during a trough in the market. And we're supposed to cheer because...
You see the game here? It ain't about strength. It's about survival.
Welcome to the "Terms and Conditions" Economy
Can We Please Talk About the Cookies?
You want to know what this whole situation feels like? I was digging through one of the source articles for this story, trying to find a simple publication date. A date. And instead of a date, I get slammed with a two-thousand-word “Cookie Notice” from NBCUniversal.
I’m not kidding. It was an endless scroll of legalese about HTTP cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, ETags, and how they and their "partners" can track my every move to deliver "interest-based advertising." It’s an absolute maze of opt-out links that probably lead to more mazes.
That’s the modern internet, and it’s modern finance in a nutshell. They don’t want you to have the simple, clear fact. They want to bury you in so much jargon, noise, and irrelevant nonsense that you just give up and accept whatever narrative they’re pushing. OXY’s stock price is the headline, the golden cross is the flashy graphic, but the real story is buried deep in the terms and conditions, just like that cookie policy. The real story is the debt.
They See a Golden Cross. I See a Fire Sale.
The Sobering Reality Check
So while the day-traders and the algorithm bots are getting all tingly about the chart, what does the rest of the world think?
Wall Street, according to the reports, “isn’t particularly bullish.” Zacks, a site that lives and breathes earnings estimates, has OXY as a #3 Rank, which is just a fancy way of saying “Hold.” Or, in human terms, “Meh.”
They point out that while rumors can cause a stock to pop, it’s the fundamentals that matter for anyone planning to stick around longer than a coffee break. And OXY’s fundamentals? Their earnings for the current quarter are expected to be down 51% year-over-year. Fifty-one percent. But hey, look at that pretty golden cross!
This is the disconnect that drives me crazy. One side is playing a video game with charts and indicators, and the other is looking at a business that’s facing a massive earnings drop and is contemplating a fire sale of a core division to manage its debt.
Which story do you think is more real?
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe in this market, fundamentals are just a quaint, old-fashioned idea. Maybe all that matters are the squiggly lines and the whispers about what the big money is doing next. Maybe the smiley face formation is the next big thing. It just feels like we’re all being played.
Spoiler: It's Just Debt
Forget the golden cross. Forget the Buffett rumors for a second. Strip it all away and what are you left with? A heavily indebted company looking to sell a major asset at a weak point in the market cycle to clean up its balance sheet. That’s the whole story. Everything else is just marketing.
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