On March 30, Chevron's Chief Legal Officer filed the last insider sale at $213. That was 105 days ago. Since then, through $289 million of combined energy insider selling, through oil dropping from $126 to $75, through six Hormuz closure cycles — not a single insider at CVX, XOM, COP, SLB, or LNG has bought a share.
Tomorrow, Chevron enters its Q2 earnings blackout. The pre-blackout window — the last chance for insiders to trade before July 31 earnings — closed today. Zero purchases. Day 113.
But something else happened in the last three weeks. Quietly, at the edges of the energy sector, insiders started buying.
Center and Edge
XOM — Zero. $117.
COP — Zero. $105.
SLB — 20+ sales, $4.5M. Zero buys.
LNG — Zero.
UUUU — CEO Bhappu. $969K at $13.08. July 7.
UUUU — Director Hansen. $51K at $12.70. July 9.
REI — CEO McKinney. Cluster at $1.19. July 1.
REI — CFO Johl. Cluster at $1.19. July 2.
None of these are large dollar amounts. OXY's CEO bought a quarter-million dollars of stock — meaningful for a personal statement, trivial against the company's $48 billion market cap. The UUUU cluster totals just over a million. REI trades at $1.19.
That's the point.
How Conviction Starts
Insider buying doesn't flip like a switch. It seeps in from the periphery. The first buy in any sector rotation is always small, always at a name most people aren't watching, always at a price that looks like catching a falling knife.
OXY's CEO is the most significant of the three. This is the first discretionary purchase by a major energy company CEO since the $289M selling wave began in February. Jackson bought at $52 with oil at $68. His predecessor — Buffett's Occidental — hasn't filed a Form 4 purchase since Berkshire's position became passive. The CEO buying while his largest shareholder stays quiet is a divergence worth noting.
UUUU is different — uranium and rare earth, not crude oil. But CEO Bhappu's $969K is the largest single discretionary energy-adjacent insider purchase in recent months. And it came with a director buying two days later. That's a cluster. Insiders don't accidentally coordinate.
REI is micro-cap. But a CEO and CFO both buying within 24 hours of each other, into a 24% crude oil crash, is exactly the kind of signal that looks foolish until it doesn't.
The Question the Blackout Asks
CVX insiders sold at $187-213. The stock is at $180. Oil is at $75 WTI, down 41% from the April peak. By every measure that made selling right in February and March, buying should at least be tempting now.
It isn't. Or if it is, they chose not to act before the window closed.
The next time a CVX insider can legally trade is approximately August 4.
Until then, the center is dark. The edge is where the light is.
Five insiders at three companies doesn't make a trend. It might not even make a signal. But after 113 days of absolute silence from every major energy insider in America, the fact that anyone is buying — at any size, at any name — is the first data point that differs from zero.
Monitoring: CVX post-blackout window (~August 4). OXY for follow-through from Jackson or additional insiders. UUUU for cluster expansion. July 17 GL X1 expiry — sanctions tightening may pressure oil prices further, testing whether edge buyers hold or fold.