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> But bear in mind also that the price of gasoline is not directly tracking the price of oil There's always been a substantial lag. Production/shipping always
by CydeWeys 4y ago
> But bear in mind also that the price of gasoline is not directly tracking the price of oil
There's always been a substantial lag. Production/shipping always takes time, plus you've got the sticky price effect to contend with. The falling price of crude today will result in cheaper prices at the pump later this year, but not immediately.
- danaris 4y agoThat's likely true, too. I'm hopeful that we will, indeed, see some drop in the price of gas (though frankly, I'm also expecting to see prices rise again before winter...which is going to be rough in some places). But from what I understand, gas prices also rose much faster in proportion to the price of oil than they have in past oil price spikes. And while I haven't seen any numbers specifically for oil/gas companies, we've definitely been seeing record profits alongside the rising prices in various places these past few months. I can't claim that it's the whole of the current inflation, but there's definitely some opportunistic price gouging going on.
- balderdash 4y agoIf you’re talking about retail gas prices a lot of that is inventory driven. Think about it, if I buy a tanker truck of diesel that takes a week to sell @$3/gal and prices start to rise, sure I’ll rapidly match prices, but maybe be willing to be a bit cheap (since I make most of my money on the convenience store), but now fast forward 6 months and I buy a cargo @5.5 and prices start to drop, I’m going to be inclined to lower prices as slowly as I can try to limit at how much of a loss as I going to sell my fuel high cost basis fuel (where it becomes a little anti-consumer is I can probably rely on the station across the street to be in the bind, and so neither of us are in a rush to mark to market until we have newer lower cost basis inventory)