It's been quite a week for Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and the good times should continue to roll today. The company was expected to report first quarter earnings this morning of $1.52, but surprised to the upside with actual earnings of $1.62.

Shares of Exxon Mobil are trading higher in the pre-market, but not too dramatically. Currently the stock is being pushed up 0.8% to $80.59 by early morning traders.

It has definitely been a good week for the world's largest oil company. The stock has set a couple of new all time highs this week despite being downgraded by a couple brokers. Exxon Mobil also announced it has successfully drilled the deepest oil well in the world. The stronger-than-expected earnings this morning are just the icing on the cake.

The company will he hosting a conference call at 11 a.m. EDT to discuss this morning earnings numbers, and I will be liveblogging the event in its entirety. So be sure to check back around 11 this morning for live coverage of the call updated every few minutes.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer. DISCLOSURE: Mr. Fowlkes owns and/or controls diversified portfolios of long and short stock and option positions that include holdings in XOM.

This post was written by Chris Pummer, special contributor to AOL Money & Finance.

Almost every American has a mega-company they dislike or downright despise. A select few companies bear the undesired distinction of being widely abhorred.

While consumers hold some whole industries in contempt like insurers and airlines – the latter unfairly given historically low fares -- certain industry leaders have become magnets of scorn.

Today's monopoly-wannabes are different than monoliths like John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil dismantled in the trust-busting era a century ago. The bygone variety abused a fast-expanding smokestack economy and vast scientific advances. Today's are retail and technology giants exploiting the deregulated business environment spawned in the 1980s and consumers' indiscriminate appetite for cheap prices and convenience.

Our collective spending choices and patronage vaulted each into its dominant position. Consumer champion Ralph Nader blames not only weak government oversight, but also our swift shift to a cashless society, in which consumers pay little mind to the consequences of their hasty credit- and debit-card transactions.

Yesterday, the big oil field services company Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) announced outstanding earnings for the third quarter. Net earnings from continuing operations rose from $492 million in the same quarter last year to $615 million this quarter.

Halliburton is also spinning off its KBR construction unit in an IPO that should value the unit at about $10 billion. It does sound like good news that just gets better. Halliburton's results were driven by the needs of the big oil companies to find more of the black gold and the company was rewarded with better earnings.

So why then is HAL's stock trading at just under $31 on a 52-week high/low of $41.99/$26.33? (Even after the KBR spin-off news drove it up over 5% today.) Could it be the $59 a barrel of oil? It's a trick question, but the answer is probably yes. If so, the price of some of Halliburton's largest customers might be about to come down as well.

Shares of Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XM) and Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX) trade very near their 12-month highs. It may not make a great deal of sense for one of the largest suppliers of services to big oil to trade near its low. At least not while big oil itself trades so high.

The market has a way of evening things out, which in this case probably does not mean Halliburton's price is heading up.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

[pic by paalb]