Marathon Petroleum is an independent petroleum refining and marketing, retail and midstream company. Co.'s segments include: Refining and Marketing, which refines crude oil and other feedstocks at its refineries, purchases refined products and ethanol for resale and distributes refined products; Retail, which sells transportation fuels and convenience products in the retail market across the U.S.; and Midstream, which transports, stores, distributes and markets crude oil and refined products via refining logistics assets, pipelines, terminals, towboats and barges, gathers, processes and transports natural gas, and gathers, transports, fractionates, stores and markets natural gas liquids.
When researching a stock like Marathon Petroleum, many investors are the most familiar with Fundamental Analysis — looking at a company's balance sheet, earnings, revenues, and what's happening in that company's underlying business. Investors who use Fundamental Analysis to identify good stocks to buy or sell can also benefit from MPC Technical Analysis to help find a good entry or exit point. Technical Analysis is blind to the fundamentals and looks only at the trading data for MPC stock — the real life supply and demand for the stock over time — and examines that data in different ways. One of those ways is to calculate a Simpe Moving Average ("SMA") by looking back a certain number of days. One of the most popular "longer look-backs" is the MPC 200 day moving average ("MPC 200 DMA"), while one of the most popular "shorter look-backs" is the MPC 50 day moving average ("MPC 50 DMA"). A chart showing both of these popular moving averages is shown on this page for Marathon Petroleum. Comparing two moving averages against each other can be a useful visualization tool: by calculating the difference between the MPC 200 DMA and the MPC 50 DMA, we get a moving average convergence divergence indicator ("MPC MACD"). The MPC MACD chart, in conjunction with the chart of the moving averages, basically helps in visualizing how the moving averages are showing convergence (moving closer together), or divergence (moving farther apart). |
Video: Technical Analysis