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Bill Brasky

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Posts posted by Bill Brasky

  1. the phrase "moving day" while watching golf.   I have never heard this term until 15-20 years ago.   the announcers fucking ramrod this saying down your fucking throat every saturday and especially at majors.   you would literally die of alcohol poisoning if you played a game where you took a shot every time an announcer said "moving day" while watching the masters 

  2. 19 hours ago, Tex48 said:

    I'm going to the NASCAR race next Sunday in Austin. Any advice? I went to COTA for the US F1 GP wondering how different it is to this. 

    arrive several hours early to tailgate, go to all the souvenir trailers, and people watch 

  3. 8 hours ago, Storm the Field said:

    Twitter shows me a lot of tweets from GasBuddy. In a nutshell: stations lose money during rapid RBOB spikes and have to quickly jack up their prices to catch up. The drops occur slower b/c they need time to recoup their losses and turn a profit again.

    Or, in other words, "elevator up, stairs down."

     

     

    It really depends on where they are at on inventory when the prices rise and fall.   If you filled your diesel tanks to the rim and next day it goes up 80 cents per gallon in cost, you raise your price to stay competitive with the market, then turnover that inventory in a day or two, you are golden.   If you were empty and forced to buy some on the day when it rose 80 cents, then the next day it drops 50 cents per gallon you are screwed.   

  4. On 3/13/2022 at 12:20 PM, jimmyjazz said:

    Can someone explain the correlation between gasoline prices and oil prices, and how they can get disconnected?  I've seen a rule of thumb that a price change of $10/bbl translates to $0.25 at the pump, but sometimes I see significantly different gas prices for the same underlying oil price.

    For instance, WTI was roughly $75/bbl in October 2018 and October 2021, but EIA says the blended gasoline price at those points in time were $2.94/gal (2018) and $3.38/gal (2021).  That's more than a 10% price difference for the same underlying price of oil.  Is the price of gasoline backwards looking; i.e., I should compare October gas prices to (say) August oil prices to allow for processing time?  That doesn't seem consistent with what's going on now -- oil has shot up over the past few weeks, as has gasoline.

    While related there is no simple formula of oil price of x = street price of gas y.   Look at the RBOB markets to get a starting point of what the street price will be, then add in your state/federal taxes (38 cents if you live in Texas), freight (2 to 10 cents), and margin for the gas station itself and that will get you in the ballpark for the street price.   

    Last week was pretty wild.  Most gas stations had to rise their prices pretty rapidly to account for increase in prices on the RBOB market.   If you didn't raise your price to keep up with competition then the store's inventory would get depleted rapidly to the point of running out of fuel to sell.   You would then lose out on inside sales where they really make good margin.   Also for the smaller mom and pop type of places they would need to raise price to have cash on hand to pay for the next delivery of more expensive fuel.  

    • Hook 'Em 2
  5. 58 minutes ago, Chopper said:

    It's been a long time since I took macroeconomics but when an industry is dominated by just 4 companies, and the cost of entry is high because it requires expensive P&E, the gov't regs make very little difference because the competition -- an oligopoly -- holds pricing power and could easily price any new entrant right out of the game. I'd argue, in fact, that gov't regulations which allowed 4 companies to merge and then dominate the market for meats, means we don't have enough regulation. When was The Jungle published - over 100 years ago? On the topic of FDA regs, not enough has changed in the meatpacking industry since then.  No meatpacker shivers in fear of the FDA inspector.

    We have the same problem - oligopolies which behave like monopolists - in the railroad and in the ports industries. They are bottlenecks and their behavior is destructive to capitalism.

    I wouldn't say that government regulations allowed mergers so that only 4 companies ruled the meat packing industry, more like government regulations forced them to merge.   And now the big 4 are reaping the benefits.   

    • Like 1
  6. I guess it belongs here since no more motorcycles run at Pikes Peak anymore, but the official entry list came out today.   Highlights for me are Rod Millen coming back with his 1000HP Tacoma, Mike Whiddett in a 1200 HP Mazda with a four rotor engine, and J.R Hildebrand entering a Dallara Indycar 

    • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
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