Occidental Petroleum has three reporting segments: oil and gas, which explores for, develops and produces oil and condensate, natural gas liquids (NGL) and natural gas; chemical, which mainly manufactures and markets basic chemicals (chlorine, caustic soda, chlorinated organics, potassium chemicals, ethylene dichloride, chlorinated isocyanurates, sodium silicates and calcium chloride) and vinyls (vinyl chloride monomer, polyvinyl chloride and ethylene); and midstream and marketing, which purchases, markets, gathers, processes, transports and stores oil, condensate, NGL, natural gas, carbon dioxide and power.
When researching a stock like Occidental Petroleum, many investors are the most familiar with Fundamental Analysis — looking at a company's balance sheet, earnings, revenues, and what's happening in that company's underlying business. Investors who use Fundamental Analysis to identify good stocks to buy or sell can also benefit from OXY Technical Analysis to help find a good entry or exit point. Technical Analysis is blind to the fundamentals and looks only at the trading data for OXY stock — the real life supply and demand for the stock over time — and examines that data in different ways. One of those ways is to calculate a Simpe Moving Average ("SMA") by looking back a certain number of days. One of the most popular "longer look-backs" is the OXY 200 day moving average ("OXY 200 DMA"), while one of the most popular "shorter look-backs" is the OXY 50 day moving average ("OXY 50 DMA"). A chart showing both of these popular moving averages is shown on this page for Occidental Petroleum. |