You answered your own question.

"Because EXXON stock seems to be at 2014 levels."

Because when people research a business’s prospects for the purposes of investing their own money, they come to incorporate other information such as profit margins and volatility into their analysis.

Stock price is only very loosely related to short term profits. Stock price reflects people's expectation of what people would be willing to pay for those stocks at some future point in time. If a company has done something to fundamentally make itself more profitable, like getting rid of some inefficiency or adding some capability, that could be a good sign it will be more valuable in the future. However a brief surge in profits from a rare event that can not be readily replicated gives no indication that the stock is a good investment.

This is not a rare event though. These 'price gouging' events happen very often. you can certainly count on them happening every few years.

And they always have been. The volatility of goods have been factored into the price already. If there is some reason to believe the volatility is going to change in the long term that could affect price, but again a spike like this is not indicative of a long term trend.

> CFO Max Bowman attributed the monopolist's good fortune to "significantly higher selling prices" and "our ability to adapt to inflationary market pressures." Cal-Maine's stock is up 47% from a year ago – a record high.

From eggspensive thread. I think this is the first egg 'price gouging' event in my lifetime. Its the opposite of 'long term trend' that you say is necessary for stock price bump. What explains this then?

You can't simultaneously argue that price gouging events are rare and not rare. Pick one.

I was referring to the volatility of oil being factored into the price which is why Exxon Mobile's stock doesn't go up significantly when the price of oil goes up.

> You can't simultaneously argue that price gouging events are rare and not rare.

Why not though. It can be rare in some industries( eggs) and not rare in others(oil & gas). Why would there a be universal price gouging rule that applies to every industry.

> I was referring to the volatility of oil being factored into the price which is why Exxon Mobile's

Thats what i am asking you why is not factored into Cal-Maine's stock but factored into Exxon's stock.

The first part you wrote is the answer to the second part.