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Originally Posted by beldannon5
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https://c.tenor.com/XW-AE3pdPq4AAAAC...iden-laugh.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by beldannon5
What a difference a couple of weeks makes. Oil closed today under $96.00 barrel, another 7% slide and down overall 30% from it's highs. But what has changed? The United States oil producers really aren't making anymore oil, the Keystone XL pipeline is still in the rubbish bin and Russian oil is still banned in our country.
The market came to it's senses, realizing there is no shortage and that the world energy economy isn't going to shrivel up and die without Russia. This didn't stop oil producers and their Republican mouthpieces from trying to get massive promises and concessions, which ultimately were not needed. When they failed to produce, the rest of the world stepped up and our President and his team reached out to previous business partners to shore up direct supply for our country.
I'm sorry some unscrupulous traders used the futures market as a speculation lottery, hope they lost their asses. Sorry for the American people who lost and will continue to lose hundreds of dollars from their monthly budgets as a result of sensationalist trading.
I would like to point out some quiet changes were made in the last few days to combat the impact of speculation. Namely by increasing the margin, or upfront money traders had to put on the line to trade oil. It did a lot to cut out the legs of those spreading panic trying to make money on lower priced contracts they could sell at a profit.
Quote:
(Bloomberg) -- The frenzied oil futures market is giving traders a new headache -- it now costs significantly more to trade the same amount of oil.
Initial margins, or the collateral that clearing houses require investors to put up to manage risk, have surged since Russia invaded Ukraine and oil prices skyrocketed to the highest levels in more than a decade.
As volatility surges with prices seeing some of their biggest swings on record, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and CME Group Inc. have ramped up their margin requirements in an effort to mitigate market instability. The increases will act as a deterrent to speculative trading and likely lower activity, market participants said. Open interest in major oil contracts is already plunging.
CME Group has increased margin requirements for its U.S. crude and heating oil futures contracts four times since Feb. 23, the day before the invasion. Margins climbed to 9.7% of the notional contract size for front-month West Texas Intermediate futures and 8.3% for heating oil as of March 8.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bnn...36306.amp.html
Oh wow. Oil is down more.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Seran
They why have the greedy fuckers at the pumps not dropped their prices? As soon as oil goes up, the gas stations immediately jump their prices. As oil prices fall, gas stays high for days or weeks after the prices drop. Shouldn't the prices drop with the fall of oil?
Since last week when oil hit that high of $112 a barrel or whatever it was and it pushed gas prices around me up to $4/gallon. You think the prices would have adjusted down some, even a little bit. Maybe 5-10 cents, but nope. Gas prices are still exactly where they were a week ago.
Regardless of what is being done now, why have gas prices only gone up since Biden took office? I mean, Biden has been in office for...2 years now? Will the price ever come down again to what they were before he took office or will the public always be screwed under his watch when it comes to gas prices?
They'll go down, slowly, but at a fraction of the pace they went up. Why? Profits. By squeezing out as much profit as possible at what customers are willing to pay, the business makes money. When competitors begin to lower prices to attract more buyers, prices will be forced to go lower. That is how the market is supposed to work anyways, a healthy amount of competition to drive innovation and efficiency to allow better prices. But where there's too little competition, usually through monopolies or price fixing arrangements, only the customers suffer.Quote:
Originally Posted by drumpel
And why are prices up under Biden? It's not a coincidence, they economy is cooking and people are making more money, so wholesalers and retailers are able to get away with more. The price of oil helped push prices up, though realistically the price we pay per gallon now is stupidly high versus what we paid per gallon in 2008 when oil was north of $140 a barrel.
In case that's tldr: Greed and price fixing. That's why all of the links were posted regarding supply and the massive crack spread over oil cost versus oil distillate prices.
Ours went up to 3.89 and has been going down every day for the last week. Paid 3.74 yesterdayQuote:
Originally Posted by drumpel
Here's President Biden overnight pointing out the massive disparity between the drop in oil prices versus the slow decline in gasoline prices. Something I've pointed out repeatedly, that gasoline producers and wholesalers are making bank by exploiting market conditions.
Gasoline stocks on the market today were created when oil was priced less than $90 a barrel, yet shot up 20-30% or more as oil prices skyrocketed due to misguided speculation on supply concerns. But as I said before, gas prices never come down the same way oil does, at least not as quickly.Quote:
Biden fired off a tweet Wednesday morning highlighting the painfully slow decline in gasoline prices in a bid to draw scrutiny to a decades-long trend that critics say hurts consumers by failing to pass savings along to drivers.
"Oil prices are decreasing, gas prices should too," Biden said on Twitter. "Last time oil was $96 a barrel, gas was $3.62 a gallon. Now it's $4.31. Oil and gas companies shouldn't pad their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans."
Thank goodness we have a President who uses Twitter for something other than disparaging teenagers worried about climate change.
If you want a better idea of the extent of the gas price manipulation within the energy sector, take a look at this week's Energy Information Administration. Here's the excerpt via Oilprice.com:
The amount of gasoline produced domestically FELL while the amount of oil made available increased last week.Quote:
Gasoline inventories shed 3.6 million barrels in the week to March 11, which compared with a decline of 1.4 million barrels for the previous week.
Gasoline production averaged 9.4 barrels daily last week, which compared with 9.6 million barrels daily a week earlier
Are you suggesting that a capitalistic enterprise targeted by the government isn't doing all it can to support said government? Odd how that works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seran
Well they're not being targeted first of all. But if that is actually happening that is criminal market manipulation. Do you have any specific information you would like to share about their antitrust violation you're alleging?Quote:
Originally Posted by Suppa Hobbit Mage
Just mixing it up. I like to respond to one in every 40ish of your dumb posts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seran