Investors who spent the past two years chasing the AI trade through Magnificent Seven stocks would have made far more money buying a company that turns crude oil into fuel. Valero Energy Corp.
66. The stock has now rallied over 200% in the last two years.
Over the same period, the strongest Magnificent Seven stock was Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), up 119%.
Nvidia Corp. 5%.
StockSept. 18, 2024Sept.
18, 20262-Year ChangeValero Energy Corp. 8%Alphabet Inc.
5%Tesla Inc. 5%Apple Inc.
com Inc. 5%Meta Platforms Inc.
4%Microsoft Corp. 2% Valero Stock Became A Scarcity Trade Valero is not an oil producer.
It buys crude and earns money from the difference between input costs and refined-product prices. That difference is known as a crack spread.
When gasoline or diesel becomes scarcer than crude, the spread widens and refinery profits can rise rapidly. That mechanism has become especially powerful in 2026.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and disruptions to global fuel flows have tightened both crude and refined-product markets. 9192 a gallon.
61. S.
benchmark, traded at $102. The difference is roughly $104 a barrel of gross margin on diesel alone, a new record.
The historical norm for the blended 3-2-1 refining margin, which mixes two barrels of gasoline with one of diesel, is around $19 a barrel. That blended measure sits near $61 today.
, with roughly 3 million barrels per day of throughput capacity. 28 a year earlier.
35 in the same quarter of 2025. 95 million barrels a day across 15 refineries.
97 billion in operating cash flow in the first half of 2026. 84 billion through buybacks and $714 million in dividends over the same period.
34 billion. 7 billion.
The Average Wall Street Analyst Is Still Behind The Move Valero carries a consensus Overweight rating from 15 analysts tracked by Benzinga Analyst Ratings, with an average price target of $283. 4% below where the stock trades.
Yet, the average masks a recent shift. Every target set in the past three weeks sits far above it.
