Originally Posted by Aleks
This illustrates it nicely, doesn't it? Its honestly exactly the visual representation of what this thread was about, long weekend, HUGE hike, and then correction to the norm.
Cool, you've got one weekend that it went down, IIRC on Sunday, after having increased that Wednesday I believe. Your point isn't being proven any more than mine is in your eyes. If you like to continue to keep backing up the industry, please do, but you don't have to discount the fact that every other person here is saying hey, its another long weekend, look at that HUGE hike. Nobody is saying that gas doesn't go up and down, of course it does, but a fluctuation of 88.9 to 92.9 is plenty different from 88.9 to 104.9 overnight, and it invokes an entirely different reaction from anybody who is a consumer. That isn't unique to gas either, if you had other commodities that get consumed on a large scale basis that did that swing, there would be equal reactions. You don't see the price of coffee increasing on a Sunday because more people are out brunching and socializing.
Crude correlation is another funny argument to me, it was brought up earlier in the thread that there was a price level attached with a certain crude price, and then that seems to have "broken" when crude crashed and gas stayed high-ish (relative to the price vs. crude correlation from before that time, ie: $100-140 mark). Now that delta is much larger, and its fine to say that gas price does follow crude price, albeit loosely, but you can't argue against the fact that we are not paying the prices we were when crude used to be $50, we are still paying what it was at $100. The downward correction didn't happen, it just never came, and we've adjusted to the high price as being normal. People are afraid of what would happen should crude head back to $90+, and rightfully so, that gap is larger and the price will float that same gap to even higher prices.
Now, I agree there is an increase in demand on a long weekend, yes more people drive, but does a 4 day increase actually reflect the impact on supply or storage? Hell no, that gas is going to get sold anyhow, and there is still a huge amount of refined fuel in storage, and that which is sold will be made up again. Increasing the price does nothing to "help supply", it is simply a greedy capitalistic tactic to profit from those times that more gas will be sold. That gas costs the same to produce as the gas the week before, and the week after (minus the minor fluctuations in crude price and exchange) but even then its a futures market so the gas you're buying was paid for long before. I think its funny they use spot pricing on a commodity bought on a futures market
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