after being up all day and one of the strongest of the oil stocks throughout the day today, XOM fell a buck in the last hour on huge volume 20 million shares (big chunk was closing print). All the while s&p futures were steady to up in last hour. XOM actually appears to have had the heaviest volume of the last 12 months today. Can someone explain the mechanics behind this? Why did people need to sell so much? If they needed to sell so much, why did they wait until the last hour? Interestingly, XOM was down the most of almost any oil stock on big drop Tuesday. Market really acts dumb lately. Shouldn't XOM hold up better than most oil stocks during a market mini-crash as it is a widow and orphan stock with AAA+++ credit rating??? Instead it falls the most on tuesday and then gets dumped into oblivian at the close today. Meanwhile, my HOC short doesn't fall and goes up when it should be 3'rd tier names that are crashing during a VIX spike not XOM. If XOM goes down again tomorrow it will be testing the low of the year which seems signifcant.
I would have to say that wasnt just many people as much as a large order , institution or not,,, do you know what the closing print was by chance,, curious,, i was scalping it during the sell off,,,
No way to tell what the real quote was/should have been on xom at any point during the day, nyse was so far behind in processing the orders that they processed 5 million in the extended close from 4 - 4:15 and another 3 million between 4:15 and 4:30
Too many short players in this stock right now. Regardless of what the Dow or crude oil does these individuals are hell bent on shorting this stock.