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. (NYSE:VLO) traded at $415 on Friday morning after setting a fresh record intraday high of $416.66.
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. (NASDAQ:NVDA), the company at the center of the artificial intelligence trade, gained 93.5%.
| Stock | Sept. 18, 2024 | Sept. 18, 2026 | 2-Year Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) | $136.66 | $415.45 | +203.8% |
| Alphabet Inc. | $159.81 | $351.09 | +119.9% |
| Nvidia Corp. | $113.37 | $219.37 | +93.5% |
| Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) | $227.20 | $366.99 | +61.5% |
| Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) | $220.69 | $333.30 | +51.0% |
| Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) | $186.43 | $252.58 | +35.5% |
| Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) | $537.95 | $674.80 | +25.4% |
| Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) | $430.81 | $759.17 | +14.06% |
| SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) | $561.40 | $759.17 | +35.2% |
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.
On Friday morning, ultra-low-sulfur diesel futures traded at $4.9192 a gallon. A barrel holds 42 gallons, so a barrel of diesel was worth about $206.61.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.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.
Valero owns 14 refineries across the U.S., Canada and the U.K., with roughly 3 million barrels per day of throughput capacity.
The Earnings Are Showing Up
Valero reported second-quarter revenue of $44.48 billion, up 48.8% year-over-year, and adjusted earnings of $12.54 per share against $2.28 a year earlier.
Refining margin per barrel of throughput reached $23.62, compared with $12.35 in the same quarter of 2025. Throughput averaged 2.95 million barrels a day across 15 refineries.
The company generated $6.97 billion in operating cash flow in the first half of 2026. It returned $2.84 billion through buybacks and $714 million in dividends over the same period.
Trailing twelve-month earnings per share reached $23.93 through the second quarter, against full-year 2025 net income of $2.34 billion. The stock trades at 17.2 times trailing earnings with a 1.16% dividend yield and a market value of $119.7 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.
That is 31.4% below where the stock trades.
Yet, the average masks a recent shift. Every target set in the past three weeks sits far above it.
| Date | Firm | Analyst | Action | Rating | Price Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 14, 2026 | Raymond James | Justin Jenkins | PT Raise | Strong Buy | $350 → $450 |
| Sep 14, 2026 | Morgan Stanley | Joe Laetsch | PT Raise | Equal-Weight | $255 → $411 |
| Sep 8, 2026 | UBS | Manav Gupta | PT Raise | Buy | $355 → $450 |
| Sep 3, 2026 | Piper Sandler | John Royall | PT Raise | Overweight | $329 → $435 |
| Sep 1, 2026 | Wells Fargo | Sam Margolin | PT Raise | Overweight | $356 → $389 |
| Aug 4, 2026 | Mizuho | Nitin Kumar | PT Raise | Neutral | $289 → $300 |
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