One of the standouts of today's afternoon trading session has been Occidental Petroleum, which logged a -4.9% drop and underperformed the S&P 500 by -4.0%. The Oil & Gas Drilling stock is now trading at $61.72 per share and is -11.83% below its average target price of $70.0. Analysts have set target prices ranging from $59.0 to 85.0 dollars per share, and have given the stock an average rating of buy.
We can use Occidental Petroleum's short interest as a proxy for determining general market sentiment regarding the stock. The short interest is the percentage of the share float that represents short positions, meaning that the investor believes the stock will decline in the future. Since OXY's short interest is 10.1%, the market sentiment is mixed on this stock.
When a stock is sold short, it means an investor has borrowed shares of the stock from their broker, and then sold them at the going market price. The investor hopes for the price to decline, so that they might buy those shares back at a lower price in the future. Once they do, they can return the borrowed shares to their broker, and keep the profit they made on the transaction.
Another way to gauge the sentiment on Occidental Petroleum is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 79.6% of the shares are held by pension, mutual, and hedge funds, which shows that these institutions probably have strong confidence in the stock.
If institutions are invested in a particular stock, it shows in most cases that they have performed quality research and concluded that it is a good investment. In some cases, however, increases in institutional ownership could be a sign of a takeover attempt or proxy fight, which can actually injure share prices. Also, institutions are not infallible, and can certainly make miscalculations -- often with spectacular results.
Overall, there is mixed market sentiment towards Occidental Petroleum because of an analyst consensus of some upside potential, a buy rating, an above average percentage of its shares sold short, and an average number of institutional investors. Investors should not base their decisions on market sentiment only, they should also be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.
At a glance, here are some essential statistics you may want to know about OXY:
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It has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $5.92 per share
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Occidental Petroleum has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 10.4 while the S&P 500 average is 15.97
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The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 2.66 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 2.95
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Occidental Petroleum is a Energy company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 7.54 and 1.68 respectively
