Exxon Mobil, which has a market cap of 363 billion dollars, 4.15 billion shares outstanding, and revenue of over 200 billion annual, is a Dow 30 component and one of the most important stocks for exchange insiders. As a direct descendant of John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, XOM is an extension of the panoply of greed and monopolist corruption of the 20th century and beyond, through its shares and large banking affiliations, such as Chase, and later Chase Manhattan with David Rockefeller and now JP Morgan Chase-how convenient.
Like many of the very large cap stocks in the Dow and S and P 500, XOM need only trade in a more narrow range than it used to when it had much less shares outstanding, to accomplish all that insiders need to do, to accumulate and distribute vast amounts of stock. XOM has 4.3 billion in cash and 45 billion in debt. But that doesn’t matter to the banks, provided the gravy train from the exchange rolls on.
An illustration of the magnitude of the influence XOM has on our markets and economy, can be seen in the above chart for 2008. Going just on the volume for the referenced days and being very conservative and saying insiders controlled around 20 million shares (I’m pretty sure it was probably much, much more than that) and near or at these prices, of 77.58 to 117.20 and then to the low of 56.51, represents around two billion dollars. I’m fairly certain that is quite conservative a number, but no matter. Not a bad haul for a few weeks “work”. Imagine year in and year out.
XOM is currently in a pullback and further analysis will follow.