Oil Company Stocks: Where We Are and Where We Were (XLE; XOP)

A quick visual on the current state of play. A couple times this year the smaller exploration & production companies stocks -proxied by the XOP- have led the way for the larger playas in the S&P 500 the sector ETF XLE.

Now a walk down memory lane, the commentary is from July 1, the charts are current:

...XLE-The Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF, $74.03 down $1.13 and $2.33 above the Jan. 14, 2015  $71.70 multi-year low:

FinViz

And the one that tipped us to the potential downside:
XOP- The SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF, $45.13 down $1.53 and $3.50 above the January low.

A break below the prior lows opens the gates of hell the way lower for the longs.

The verbiage was from July 1st's "Major Oil ETFs Nearing Collapse (XLE; XOP)", which turned out to be a pretty good call.

The XLE  bottomed at $58.74 on August 24, down 20.6% in 55 days as we did indeed break below those prior (January) lows.

The top of the channel for the XLE is not very resistant to upside breakouts as it is, let's face it, just a line 
drawn between two points but it bears watching as a spot something could develop.