Better Buy: Chevron or All 30 Dow Jones Stocks?

You're not crazy. Energy stocks increasingly seem as if they're more trouble than they're worth. The price of oil has become painfully volatile in recent years, so much so that refiners and drillers are regularly opting to cease operations while prices are suppressed. This of course (eventually) prompts price surges, exacerbating the headache waiting at the other end of the supply/demand spectrum. Besides, aren't fossil fuels being phased out by renewables? It's all enough to inspire investors to skip owning an individual oil and gas name altogether and simply step into a broad index like the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI).

Before you write off the entire energy sector, though, know that there's more of a future for these companies than the current rhetoric implies. Indeed, Dow constituent Chevron (NYSE: CVX) is not only one of the industry's leading companies, shares of the oil "major" are currently a better bet than its blue chip index.

That's certainly not what the stock's performance over the past year and a half would suggest. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now nearly 20% above its pre-pandemic peak and still reaching record highs, Chevron stock remains 15% below its price just before COVID-19 made landfall in the U.S. last year. In fact, Chevron is actually still well under its all-time high hit in 2014 -- weakness that reflects a bigger, philosophical shift for the world's energy market.

Source Fool.com