Re: It All Seems Quite Simple To Me!

Hi, Terry.
It's a little more complicated than that.
I am not apologizing for Big Oil. There are, however, a lot more players than Exxon/Mobil.
In the world situation, Nigeria is falling apart, Iran and Venezuela hate us, Iraq is nowhere near full production. The Chinese and Indian economies are booming and increasing their needs for oil. Our thirst for oil seems unquenchable. All of that makes the market jittery. When nervous, the market will make the prices higher.
More people are familiar with the stock market and it's daily fluctuations when information is leaked about a company's performance or problems.
Now, in the Dow, a single company's effect is somewhat diluted because because it's a combination of 30 different stocks. Some may rise,some may fall.

Supply and demand are a factor. The demand is world-wide. Certainly, if an item is "scarcer", the price increases. And in general terms, the cost of pumping that barrel of oil and refining it is fairly constant.Profits certainly increase.

If I'm not mistaken, you run a successful Ebay business.

I'll try to make an analogy without going too far out,here.
Like Ebay, a lot of oil is sold by auction.
When you have an item that is harder to find, you get higher bids from those who want your item. Your cost is irrelevant to the final bid price.
If you make a big profit from a very successful auction, are you gouging your buyer?
I'm not going to split hairs here about the differences but trying to make a general point.
But the point is that the bid price is higher because of the demand.
It's natural to blame what we see. And since gas prices are very visible, we want to make Big oil the bogeyman.
I don't see where it's any company's social responsibility to reduce profits. I remember the very first thing stated in my Finance 101 class. The sole responsibility of a company is to maximize the wealth of it's shareholders.
If your IRA or 401(k) is fortunate to hold shares in these companies, you're smiling. Companies are owned by shareholders. Shareholders are individuals, pension funds, and many others.

> Everyone is talking about 'supply and demand', 'quotas', etc. If this was
> true, the oil companies should be making the same (or nearly the same)
> profit as they were before, but they are not. If the price of the supply
> was truly that much higher it should be 'costing' them that much more to
> produce, therefor their profits should be remaining fairly constant.

> THE OIL COMPANIES ARE MAKING UNHEARD OF RECORD PROFITS. FOLKS, WE ARE
> BEING GOUGED-----IT'S AS SIMPLE AS THAT!!!