War’s Over — But Your Gas Bill Didn’t Get the Memo

[00:00:00]Good morning, gang. Happy Tuesday morning. Boy, it's going to be a busy Tuesday for me. Today's the start of Prime Day. So, just be ready for all the deals that I tell you about at lunch.

[00:00:15]In regards to deals, how many people been to the gas station here lately?

[00:00:21]Nice, huh? Gas here. Lowest I saw when I was out, what was it, Sunday was 329, which is a significant improvement over the 449 we were at a few weeks ago. I'll take it. Okay.

[00:00:40]And we're probably going to continue to see that come down. Uh, as of this morning, West Texas Intermediates at 7350ish there, thereabouts. Okay.

[00:00:54]Brent crude a couple bucks more but okay fine depending on what oil's used for.

[00:00:58]So gasoline we're going to probably see the prices continue to come down. I know you have all these people that say oh we're going to see sub $2 gas prices that I don't see. Could we get back in the twos meaning 290? Yeah, pretty easily I think. Okay, which that would be a good relief for a lot of us, for basically everybody because that means companies are paying less for gas and diesel as well, which means they don't have to pass on those costs to you at the grocery store, at the hardware store, when you buy your airplane tickets, you know, whatever that is. Adding, you know, Domino's delivering a pizza, adding a fuel search charge, right? UPS adding a fuel search charge. God knows I know that one. Okay, but let's not get too comfortable.

[00:02:10]It's the middle of June. We're dealing with 90° temperatures, right? Mhm.

[00:02:17]This is the time of year you start thinking about winter and really start watching fuel prices if you heat with propane, natural gas, especially heating oil because this is the time where you start looking to buy that. Now, I wouldn't say just yet is a good time for most of us, but it's coming.

[00:02:52]And if you're on natural gas, like I've got a propane tank out back. If you've got natural gas that you heat with, really got to watch stuff. If you're on municipal fuel, okay? And natural gas.

[00:03:09]you got natural gas stove or water heater, whatever, maybe it's time that you look into these balanced bill plans that they have. if somehow you have a way to lock in what your bill is because the issue that we're running into right now that is very quietly not being talked about. you'll find a little bit obviously is one of the things the Iranians did was they hit the natural gas facilities in their Middle Eastern neighbors countries.

[00:03:51]Europe uses a boatload of natural gas.

[00:03:57]Now, we could go back to politics on this one. The United States can provide a whole lot of natural gas for us.

[00:04:08]Remember fracking?

[00:04:10]That's natural gas. You know, and Obama wanted to, you know, shut it down. Biden shut it down. Trump brings it back. All right? You know, because they talk about the environmental hazards of it. And let's not even get into environmental hazards of stuff. Not that I won't say that it isn't that it's a perfect way of extracting petroleum out of the ground. It isn't.

[00:04:39]Okay. But there's nothing in life that's perfect. You know, they could talk about the environmental benefits of EVs. They just kind of forget all the environmental problems with EVs.

[00:04:53]A different story.

[00:04:56]We, the United States, are going to be shipping a boatload of the natural gas that we produce because they can't get it from the Middle East. It'll take a year or so to get those plants back up and running.

[00:05:15]So, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Europe, whatever you've got in the way of China, we're going to be shipping a lot of natural gas out of the country, which is going to keep the prices of natural gas high. Again, it's supply and demand. If you notice this, this always comes down to supply and demand. I don't care what it is. The cost of anything is determined upon supply and demand.

[00:05:52]So if you are using natural gas, really start paying attention to the price that your local tanker company or whatever you want to call them, your provider is charging.

[00:06:11]Because remember, they're also trying to price correctly supply and demand. There's probably more than one provider in your area, so they need to price according to competitiveness.

[00:06:31]And inevitably, these companies have traders, if you will, that are trying to hedge their prices, right? They're on the futures market, no different than a farmer is trying to hedge the price of corn or soybeans or whatever.

[00:06:51]the fuel providers are trying to hedge the price of propane or natural gas or whatever so they can they can get it as cheaply as possible and then price it as competitively as possible. And remember, they're all going to try to make a profit. They have to, contrary to what the socialist left believes, companies don't exist if they can't make a profit.

[00:07:17]Okay? Somehow the trucks have to get paid for, the building has to get paid for, and the people's salaries have to get paid for. All right, we're not even talking about profit for the owner. You know, we're talking about the basic everyday expenses have to get paid.

[00:07:31]Those get paid out of profit, not out of revenue.

[00:07:36]You know, you want to talk about the difference of profit and revenue, go take a look at what SpaceX stock has done in a week. And when everybody realized kind of what I said, gee, the company's not profitable and the stock is down 60 bucks a share.

[00:07:52]Pay attention to your fuel prices. We don't heat with gasoline.

[00:08:00]And the last thing you want to do is be a slave to the market come October, September, October or November, depending on where you are, and going, "Oh my god, we need heating oil now, or we need propane now, or we need natural gas now." And whatever the market is is what you get to pay.

[00:08:25]If you do a little bit of homework and start to watch the movement in it and you can go back and watch the movement previously either. This is called technical analysis. Okay, you can kind of figure out, hey, this is probably as low as the price is going to go. This is where I want to get it. This is where I want to fill my tank up.

[00:08:50]Okay, it's not a perfect science. Again, nothing is. But like I said earlier, it's no different than the farmer hedging his corn field or his soybeans.

[00:09:05]There's nothing that says you can't use the same tools they do to figure out when you can buy cheapest. Granted, you're not getting wholesale, but retail prices kind of run right in line with wholesale prices. It's why we have a producer price index and a consumer price index. Okay?

[00:09:31]You know what's wholesale, what's retail.

[00:09:34]Do a little bit of studying and take a look at what prices are of things historically.

[00:09:45]I mean, and go back a year. All right?

[00:09:47]go back to last summer and look at what the es and flows are, the prices, and then use the computer that God gave you, and figure out, hey, this is the price.

[00:10:02]When when it gets here, this is when I want to call the guys up and get my tank filled. It's just a suggestion to save a couple of bucks. But with everything going on, people are all rah rah rah that the war in Iran is over.

[00:10:18]Okay, the cleanup is just beginning and we still have to deal with all of that.

[00:10:23]Just because the streets of Hormuz are open doesn't mean it's back to business as usual. The infrastructure was destroyed and it's going to be a while till the rest of the world gets it back. And until then, we're the only game in town, which means we're going to get to pay higher prices.

[00:10:48]Pinball