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Chevron is the second smallest of the world's five 'super majors.' The company is the result of the 2001 merger of Chevron and Texaco. The company's operations range from energy exploration and production to refining and retail marketing. Australia, Southeast Asia, and West Africa are significant international production centers for the company. Chevron stock is a component of the S&P 500 index and currently employs approximately 40,000 people.

Many brokerage firms that serve retail and institutional clients maintain data to measure investment sentiment. This can be very valuable when evaluating how the small investor, or even the corporate giants, are feeling about the stock market - and, more importantly, what are they doing with their funds. Charles Schwab is one of those firms, with its Schwab Trading Activity Index, or STAX. STAX is a proprietary, behavior-based index designed to indicate the sentiment of retail investors and has been incorporating data since January 2019. In April, STAX fell to 41.2, down 15% from 48.4 in March and the lowest headline reading since April 2023. The STAX fell every week of the April period, though the first week saw the heaviest selling as STAX fell 11%, the biggest weekly drop since the first week of April 2023. The third week of the four saw only mild net-selling, but selling accelerated again in the final week (ended April 25). On a monthly basis, April's overall STAX plunge of 14.9% was the deepest drop since March 2020, the first full month of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is just another example of what we have been talking about for weeks, namely the similarity between 2025's correction and the pandemic correction. The current STAX reading is closing in on the low level of 37.2 at the end of 2022, right after that bear market bottomed. During the 2023/2024 market advance, the index never got out of neutral territory, peaking at 55.

Exxon Mobil is the world's largest nongovernment-owned energy company. It is also one of the world's largest publicly traded companies in terms of market capitalization. XOM operates globally along the entire hydrocarbon value chain, from energy exploration to end-user product sales and marketing. The company is the biggest refiner and marketer of refined products and has one of the largest chemicals businesses in the world. XOM is the result of the 1999 merger of Exxon and Mobil. The shares are a component of the S&P 500 index, and the company employs approximately 61,000 people.

Stocks are broadly lower at midday. At the very least, it seems some price-gain exhaustion may have set in after the solid progress last week. That said, earnings reports are flowing in and some companies are indeed pulling their forecasts and/or quantifying the impact of tariffs on their businesses.