Gerelyn Terzo
5 min read
Quick Read
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Steve Weiss booked a 35% gain exiting Valero, but VLO’s 877% decade return tripled the S&P 500’s 256% gain, undercutting his broad energy skepticism.
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Valero’s Q2 2026 adjusted EPS of $12.54 crushed the $10.13 estimate, with refining margin per barrel nearly doubling to $23.62 year over year.
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A potential diesel export ban and analyst price targets averaging $355 below the current $373 share price signal mounting near-term headwinds for Valero.
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Investment manager Steve Weiss told CNBC’s Halftime Report viewers on September 23 that he exited his entire position in Valero Energy (NYSE:VLO) after roughly a 35% gain in about a month, citing long-term skepticism about energy stocks. He also didn’t want to wear out his welcome. The Short Hills Capital Partners founder said “you got to book it when you can book it,” framing the tactical exit as prudent discipline for a commodity-linked name he said had underwhelmed as a group over the past decade.
The irony sits in the scoreboard. Valero is the one energy stock that ran away from the broader market over that exact window, and knowing when to leave a winner is its own discipline (we wrote a free handbook on riding a run and planning the exit here: Bubble Survivor’s Handbook).
Decade Scoreboard Undercuts the Sector Thesis
Over the trailing 10 years, VLO has returned 877.39%, versus 255.83% for the S&P 500 proxy SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) and just 177.32% for the Energy Select Sector SPDR (NYSEARCA:XLE). Weiss’s broader sector critique holds up on the ETF math. XLE trailed SPY by nearly 80 percentage points. Yet Valero itself tripled the benchmark he was implicitly measuring energy against.
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The near-term price action supports his timing instinct. VLO fell 6.12% over the past week and slipped 1.16% intraday on the day of his announcement, though shares remain up 130.8% YTD and 120.5% over the past year.
