Energy has energy

Energy stocks went into hibernation over the past two weeks, pushing its 10-day historical volatility down to multi-month lows. Today, many of the indexes and individual stocks are breaking above their highs from that consolidation period.

The sector has had a tough go of it for long stretches, so we've seen a few periods of false hope for the group. The last time we saw a break from short-term consolidation, last June, the stocks ran for another week or so, then had a very rough few months. The others mostly led to gains, but with the caveat of a tiny sample size.