Occidental Petroleum closed the week at $63.52, up nearly 5% — and the bears who rushed in five days ago are now clearly on the back foot.
The reversal is stark. The previous note filed on September 11 flagged a convergence of bearish signals: short interest had spiked 23% in a week to 2.82% of free float, borrowing costs had tripled, and options were defensive. That episode has now fully unwound. Short interest dropped back to 2.12% of float by September 15 — a 6.6% weekly decline — erasing most of what was built during the September 8–10 flare-up. The sharp intra-week spike to 27.7 million shares short on September 10 proved short-lived; by the 11th the unwind was already underway, and two sessions later the position was back near its August baseline. What looked like the start of a sustained bearish build turned out to be a fast-money bet that ran directly into the stock's monthly uptrend — OXY has now gained 8.8% over the past month.
The lending market tells the same story. Availability is now essentially unconstrained — nearly every share in the lending pool is free, with borrowing costs back at 0.41%, still above the 0.147% floor touched on September 3 but well below the intra-week spike. That's not a market under pressure. Borrow is cheap, shares are plentiful, and the short score has eased to 31.5 from a brief peak of 35.5 on September 10. Options positioning did tick up — the put/call ratio hit 0.55 on September 15, 2.7 standard deviations above its 20-day mean of 0.50 — but that's a mild anomaly given how stable the PCR has been all month. The options market looks modestly more cautious than usual, not alarmed.
The analyst community has been notably active, and the direction is overwhelmingly upward. UBS raised its target to $67 from $59 on September 14 while holding at Neutral. Wells Fargo lifted to $82 from $79 the same day, reiterating Overweight. Evercore ISI moved to $70 from $65 on September 11. Seaport Global initiated at Buy with a $73 target earlier in the month. The consensus mean now sits at $68 — implying roughly 7% upside from current levels — and the analyst recommendation divergence factor scores in the 91st percentile, meaning OXY's Street coverage is more bullish relative to peers than almost anything else in the ORTEX universe. The bulls point to Permian productivity, progress on debt reduction, CO2 technology optionality, and improving capital efficiency. The bear case acknowledges all of that but flags limited near-term upside and muted growth — year-on-year EPS momentum scores near the bottom of the universe at the 14th percentile.
The ownership picture adds a layer of conviction that short sellers have to respect. Berkshire Hathaway holds 26.5% of shares outstanding — 264.9 million shares as of June 30, unchanged in the most recent period. That anchor position hasn't shifted, and Berkshire's filing on this name remains a 13G/A (passive), not a 13D. Dodge & Cox holds another 7.3%, BlackRock 5.6%, and State Street added 2.9 million shares through August. The only notable change in the activist register is Vanguard Group dropping to zero percent in its March 2026 amendment, replaced by a new Vanguard Capital Management entity filing at 5.51% in April — a housekeeping restructuring rather than a change in fundamental ownership sentiment. CEO Richard Jackson made a small open-market purchase of 4,770 shares at $52.38 in late June, the one genuine discretionary insider buy in the recent record.
Peer context reinforces the week's upward drift. APA led the group with an 8.9% weekly gain. CHRD added 6.4%. COP rose 4.6%. CVX was the laggard at 3.8%. OXY's 4.7% weekly move sits comfortably in the middle of the pack — participation in a broad energy rally rather than any stock-specific catalyst. The next scheduled catalyst is Q3 earnings on November 10, with the last two earnings releases both producing positive 1-day moves and five-day gains of 6–7%, a pattern that gives the bull case some historical grounding. The question heading into that print is whether the Street's sharp upward target revisions this week — four firms raising targets in four days — will be met by equally improving operational numbers.
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