Originally Posted By: Mystic
I have been watching this same old game for a long time. Something will happen in the Middle East and fuel prices will IMMEDIATELY go up, even though there was fuel already paid for at the lower price still in the pipeline.
You're not paying the
production cost of the product. You're paying the
market cost. This is why you can sell a house that cost $100,000 to build for $200,000. It's also why you can buy a house for $200,000 one year, and have it be worth $100,000 the next year, or $300,000 the year after!
Originally Posted By: Mystic
But if for some reason there is a huge boost in available fuel, the price of fuel will NOT immediately decease.
If supply outpaces demand quick enough, sure it will. In fact, it's been demonstrated quite recently that it will:
http://www.gasbuddy.com/Charts
Look at the decline in price-at-the-pump (national average) from early December 2014 to the end of January 2015: about 75 cents in 6 weeks. It's taken until now, about 18 weeks later, to make that cost back up. In other words, it's taken 3x as long for the price to rise by 75 cents that it took for it to fall by 75 cents.
Consider other data, such as this:
This chart also shows the national average of prices at the pump. The price fell in the last third of 2014 about as quickly as it rose during the first third. The spike in prices at the beginning of 2013 mirrors pretty closely the falling-out of prices at the end of 2012. We often comment on how fast gas prices rise, but rarely acknowledge that they also fall nearly just as quickly.
Though it may be beside the point a little bit, I think it's interesting that when you adjust the price at the pump for inflation, we're paying
less now than we did at many points during the last century...