Crude Oil Civil War

The stock market just made new highs, but for the everyday American, life is hard. Business Insider said it best when they ran the headline, “Americans feel worse about the economy than ever before.”

They cited gas prices, which are up roughly 48% in the last three months alone, as the main source of discontent. But what they failed to highlight is that higher prices at the pump are just the tip of the iceberg.

That’s because everything in your life is tied to the price of oil. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the plane tickets you buy to visit your grandkids… Everything.

With oil prices rocketing as high as $120 a barrel over the past month (the highest they’ve been since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022), we’re all stretching our money more to do less.

One Spanish airline, Volotea, even asked passengers to pay a surcharge to cover the change in fuel costs… after they’d already bought their tickets.

A Tale of Two Markets