We speak about near term quarterly earnings releases for core S&P 500 components this morning in our ETF Options/Fund Money Flows recap and one of the single equity names is of course XOM (expected quarterly earnings release on 2/2/15), the number two weighted stock in the SPX itself.

XOM has notably under-performed the S&P 500 Index itself over the past quarter and has shown even more pronounced under-performance in the trailing one year and five year periods versus the index. XOM has however weathered the environment of falling Crude Oil prices comparatively well when stacked up against the broader Energy sector itself.

For if we look at XLE (SPDR Energy Select Sector, Expense Ratio 0.16%) where XOM is the number one ranked stock at about 16.63% in the underlying index, XOM has notably outperformed the sector itself not only in the trailing one quarter, but trailing one and five year periods.

XOM’s yield comes in at approximately 3% currently, and no doubt has caught a bid at times periodically on this alone, as it also has notable representation in several “Dividend” and “Value” ETF strategies that portfolio managers may be familiar with.

In HDV (iShares High Dividend, Expense Ratio 0.40%), XOM is the highest weighted member in the index with about a 9.26% allocation and XOM also has a top ranking in JKF (iShares Morningstar Large Value, Expense Ratio 0.25%) at about 7.86% and in PXLV (PowerShares RAFI Fundamental Pure Large Value Portfolio, Expense Ratio 0.39%, 7.47% weighting).

DGRW (WisdomTree U.S. Dividend Growth, Expense Ratio 0.28%) is yet another “Large Cap Value” oriented fund like the aforementioned names that has a top weighting to XOM currently (about 5.5%). Of course the usual suspects, Energy sector funds that are based on market capitalization weighted index schemes have the largest by percentage, allocations to XOM. Aside from XLE names like IYE (iShares U.S. Energy, Expense Ratio 0.46%), FENY (Fidelity MSCI Energy, Expense Ratio 0.12%), VDE (Vanguard Energy, Expense Ratio 0.14%), and FILL (iShares MSCI Global Energy Producers, Expense Ratio 0.39%) should be sensitive to near term action in XOM as well with weightings in the 17-23% range to the stock.

Energy Select Sector SPDR

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