After years of consolidation, oil & gas stocks are breaking out
By Sam Gatlin, Jason Perz
January 16, 2026
For the past few years, energy has been the most misunderstood and underallocated sector in the market.
And that’s precisely what makes what’s happening right now so important.
From 2020 through 2022, energy experienced one of the most powerful multi-year uptrends we’ve ever seen. Prices exploded higher as the world relearned an introductory lesson about scarcity, supply discipline, and demand that never really goes away.
Then, instead of giving all of that back as so many expected, the sector did something far more constructive.
It went sideways.
As we like to say, the best uptrends don’t correct through price; they correct through time.
Energy has spent nearly four years digesting gains, frustrating both bulls and bears, shaking out weak hands, and building energy for the next move.
That process now looks complete.
Across the board, energy stocks are breaking out to fresh highs, resolving multi-year consolidation patterns, and confirming that a new leg higher is underway.
The cleanest way to see this is through our Gold Rush Integrated Oil & Gas Index, an equal-weight basket of the world’s largest integrated energy stocks.
Our Integrated Oil & Gas Index has spent the past decade carving out a massive accumulation pattern, and it's now breaking out to the highest level since 2014.
So long as this breakout holds, we expect the path of least resistance to remain higher for the foreseeable future.
When we see an equal-weight index breakout like this, it suggests broad participation.
In other words, this isn’t one or two mega-caps doing the heavy lifting; it’s the entire group moving together.
And when energy moves together, it tends not to do so quietly.
Which brings us to the flagship name in the space.
Exxon Mobil $XOM is the largest publicly traded integrated oil & gas company in the world outside of Saudi Aramco, and it’s doing something it hasn’t done in decades.
The stock has been capped by a long-term trendline that stretches back over multiple market cycles. This is a line that rejected price repeatedly in 2008, again in 2014, and once more in 2023.
That trendline has finally been broken.
This is the resolution of a true multi-decade base. These are the kinds of structures we pay the closest attention to, because when they resolve, the moves are rarely modest.
As we say all the time, the bigger the base, the higher in space.
XOM is already a $550B company, and yet the chart suggests the market is just beginning to re-rate it.
Based on the structure alone, a trillion-dollar market capitalization is no longer a stretch; it’s a logical destination if this breakout holds.
At roughly $237 per share, XOM would join an elite club of trillion-dollar companies, alongside names like Apple $AAPL, Microsoft $MSFT, Nvidia $NVDA, and Alphabet $GOOG.
That matters not just to XOM shareholders but to the entire energy sector.
As the largest component of the Energy Select Sector SPDR $XLE, this breakout provides a powerful tailwind for energy’s relative performance versus the broader market.
If leadership continues to rotate toward real assets, cyclicals, and inflation beneficiaries, energy has all the ingredients to be one of the top-performing sectors this year, and potentially for years to come.
But the story doesn’t end with the integrated names.
In the past cycles, the biggest winners came from the services side of the equation. These are the companies that supply, drill, build, maintain, and enable production.
That’s why we’re paying such close attention to the Gold Rush Energy Equipment & Services Index, an equal-weight basket of oil & gas services stocks.
The Gold Rush Energy Equipment & Services Index spent years chopping sideways after its post-COVID recovery, repeatedly failing to break through the same resistance zone.
Each rejection weakened the sellers a little more, and now the price has finally pushed through that ceiling.
With the price breaking out to fresh multi-year highs, we now have confirmation that the whole energy value chain is entering brand-new primary uptrends.
Even more important, these stocks have been consistently outperforming the broader market as capital rotates into pro-cyclical areas.
That relative strength lines up perfectly with what we’re hearing from the fundamental side as well.
We recently went live on Stock Market TV with one of the top energy portfolio managers in the world, Josh Young, and energy services stocks were among his highest-conviction ideas.
His thesis is grounded in fundamentals, and the charts couldn’t agree more.
When fundamentals and technicals align like this, we pay attention.
With that in mind, we’re highlighting two of our favorite setups in the oil & gas services space for this week’s Commodities Trade of the Week. These are names with clean bases, expanding momentum, and asymmetric risk-reward profiles as this next leg of the energy expansion unfolds.
For those who want to take advantage of this move in energy, our Commodities Trades of the Week digs into two individual names with some of the best setups in the sector.
Premium members can see the entry and target levels below. 👇
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