With Iran now pumping again and no real oil freeze on the horizon (and with the State Department no doubt still looking to cripple Russia's economy by keeping oil prices low) energy stocks like CHK bear a certain amount of risk. Exxon (XOM) on the other hand has risen with oil prices adding $45 billion to its market cap in recent weeks, and as it looks to secure a deal with Russia to export gas to China, the stock could pop further (Ausick)
The sense is that following the death of Steve Jobs, inertia may have continued to propel the company forward, but now the company has peaked. Not to mention that Apple has taken on new debt to finance dividend increases in order to make the stock more attractive to investors (Cherney)
It is unclear whether CHK will be able to weather the storm even if oil stays above $40, and should WTI break and stay above $50 it is unclear whether CHK would move from underperform to outperform as a result of lackluster fundamentals. Analysts are bearish, with The Street calling for underperformance and a trend reversal in this company may not be in the cards any time soon (Gomez) With an a global economy over-laden with debt and credibility issues plaguing central banks like the BOJ, the ECB and the Fed (talk of negative rates and helicopter money drops do not help -- neither do promises of raising rates being walked back every time the latest round of poor economic data suggests that the economy is not in as fine a state as the Fed would like to see), energy stocks could be hit hard, especially if oil collapses again due to over-supply and dwindling demand
Against Microsoft, which has recently acquired LinkedIn and gotten into the marijuana seed-to-sale software business, AAPL looks ready to underperform. MSFT on the other hand may outperform as a result of its acquisition of the social media giant and its partnership with Kind, a marijuana tracking software company (Popper)
Moreover, some investors face challenges in managing the underlying high risks and transaction costs associated with stock markets since investment strategies require investors to have a remarkable knowledge of correlative risk factors of stock markets. (Klaus, 2011)