Im too young to remember pre-crisis age (before 2008) so I dont know if its new “normal” on market. Its a scheme that takes advantage of rapidly changing prices of everything.
Typical cycle Im talking about:
- Shop prices good at market price.
- *severe crisis*
- Market price rises to historic level never seen before
- Shop adjusts price to market level
- *crisis ends*
- Market price drops to normal
- Shop: OMFG -60% DISCOUNT!!!
- Any news site these days spams “articles” how every shop has same discounted item from any brand
This rages me. Worst thing is politicians use the same pattern. When war in Ukraine will end is unknown, but certain is that politicians that will be ruling will say cheap gas is their credit. Then they will point at party that was ruling before them and say “Look at these bastards, THEY made gas expensive and WE made it cheap”.
Same situation when games sequel is released. They advertise sequel, wait till people see its moneygrab and forget about. People forget and shops sell previous version at huge discount.
Reminder - gas prices cannot be hiked by suppliers because they don’t own the gas. Petroleum products are bought and sold on commodity markets before they’re ever refined or even removed from the ground. These “futures” are bought and sold and the price at the pump is related to the current price to purchase the product from the commodity brokers, plus transportation and local markup.
There are legitimate uses for futures contracts, but much of it is just gambling and capitalistic opportunism.
A lot of the financial industry is degenerate gambling, as it is people going to “experts” to get rid of risk.