Chevron heads into the final week of June with an unusual split between an options market turning notably bullish and a stock that is still down 8% on the month.
The clearest signal this week is in options. Positioning has shifted firmly toward calls — the put/call ratio has dropped to 0.69, nearly two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.83. That is the lowest defensive reading in the past year, touching the 52-week floor at 0.60. Two weeks ago the PCR was running above 0.96, close to its annual high. The rotation from protective puts to call exposure has been rapid, and it stands in contrast to a price that has only recovered modestly, gaining 0.5% on Tuesday to close at $175.98.
Short positioning adds to the picture. Bears spent most of May building — short interest climbed roughly 29% over the past month to reach 1.2% of the free float, a level that is low in absolute terms but was a meaningful accumulation for a mega-cap. That build has now stalled and begun to unwind. Shorts fell 1.2% on Tuesday and are little changed on the week after the earlier surge. Borrow costs, while up 34% over the week to 0.48%, remain trivially cheap by any standard. Availability is essentially unconstrained — the lending pool is deep and there is no mechanical pressure forcing covers. The unwinding looks voluntary, not squeezed.
The Street is broadly constructive but the stock has lagged the consensus view badly. The mean analyst price target is $217, implying roughly 23% upside from current levels — a gap that has widened as CVX has drifted lower while most firms maintained or nudged up their targets post-Q1. Morgan Stanley holds Overweight at $214, Mizuho Outperform at $230, and RBC Capital Outperform at $220; Barclays sits at Equal-Weight but lifted its target to $213 from $192 in late May. Bernstein is the outlier, cutting to $204 from $216 in mid-May. The consensus sits at Hold with five firms there, but the price target distribution skews well above the current price. Valuation is undemanding: the P/E has compressed to 12.8x, down from 14.4x thirty days ago, and EV/EBITDA is running near 6x. The dividend yield factor scores in the 96th percentile — income investors are getting well compensated to wait. Forward EPS momentum ranks in the 80th percentile on a 90-day basis, suggesting estimate revisions are still pointing upward even as the stock has not responded.
The one ownership note worth flagging is Berkshire Hathaway's reported reduction of roughly 45.8 million shares in Q1 2026, trimming its stake to just over 4.3% of shares outstanding. That is a meaningful position cut from one of CVX's highest-profile holders, though the move is now several months old and largely in the market's awareness. Director John B. Hess sold approximately $73 million in shares across multiple tranches in May — all at prices between $184 and $197, well above where the stock trades today.
Across energy peers, CVX's modest weekly decline of 2.3% looks relatively contained. XOM fell 5.8% on the week, COP dropped 6.2%, APA slid 7.6%, and OXY lost 8%. The sector is under pressure from softer crude, and CVX's relative resilience — combined with its rapidly shifting options posture — suggests some rotation toward the integrated major as a defensive energy name ahead of the July 31 earnings date.
The setup into Q2 results is therefore less about whether Chevron is a quality business and more about whether crude price assumptions, Hess integration costs, and any updated guidance on the Microsoft power deal can close even a fraction of the 23-point gap between the stock and where the Street thinks it belongs.
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