Comment on the October 2 prediction: Prices rose to $3.39, as predicted. CORRECT.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 6:15PM: The stock market stopped falling and started surging a week ago, so, of course, so have wholesale gas prices. We are set up for a spike to $3.49 on Wednesday or Thursday. Fill your tanks, my friends. — Ed Aboufadel
10:43 a.m. Wednesday
Good news for Independent Retailer: Speedway is going up to $3.559 this morning in Michigan.
The first reports came out of the east side of the state:
10:27 Marlette
10:28 Burton
10:35 Grand Blanc
10:35 Kawkawlin
10:37 South Lyon
10:39 Macomb
The first west Michigan station reported up was on 9th St. in Texas Township (Kalamazoo) at 10:40.
You neglected to update the rack adjustments this week for the spike line. It should be +$.0087 for Michigan. You still have it at +$0.0682 from two weeks ago. Based on a Chicago spot of $2.67885 (you have $2.6992), the current Michigan spike line would be $3.373321. You have it as $3.4544. My calculation makes this a full margin increase for Speedway: 18.5679¢. That means Speedway must have finally sold their excess inventory and we can finally get back to our normal expectations for gas price increases.
I look forward to the return of the Speedway statistics, particularly the state averages.
The first Grand Rapids area Speedway up to $3.559 wasn’t reported until 11:29 a.m. By that time, 11 Kalamazoo area stations were reported up, including the BP on Sprinkle Rd. at 11:07 and Marathon in Parchment at 11:12. I have consistently noticed and posted that Grand Rapids stations apparently don’t go up until an hour later than the ones in Kalamazoo and the rest of west Michigan.
The first Meijer in Michigan to respond was in Flint (W. Hill Rd. near US-23) to $3.549 at 10:59 a.m. This makes sense, because the first Speedway reports were from the Flint area. A Flint retailer tweeted about the increase at 10:43 a.m. Meijer sent a text alert at or shortly before 12:03, but nothing on Twitter or Facebook. The second Meijer station reported was in Royal Oak at 12:59. Like normal, most Meijer stations started going up at 2:00, with the first reports coming from Cedar Springs at 2:02, Holland at 2:09, and Big Rapids at 2:11.
Dieter wrote: “You neglected to update the rack adjustments this week for the spike line.”
Bill is on vacation, and I didn’t figure out the right way to make those updates until this week. You’ll see that I have the 10/10 numbers on the site, but we didn’t capture the 10/3 numbers. Sorry.
11:05 a.m. Monday
New York November gasoline futures are currently down 4.5¢ to $2.7797, after settling up 6.72¢ on Friday at $2.8247. That was a pretty big move for a Friday.
Speedway currently lists 285 stores in Michigan. It used to be 290. I’m guessing 5 stores across the state are closed for remodeling?
9:15 a.m. Tuesday
The Spike Line was not updated yesterday, so here are yesterday’s numbers:
Chicago gasoline for immediate delivery – down 7.18¢ (2.61%) to $2.6804.
New York gasoline for November delivery – down 8.18¢ to $2.7429.
New York crude oil for November delivery – down 42¢ tp $86.38.
What this means for the spike line (reading SPIKE for all three states since Friday) is hard to say, because I don’t know where to get the current data for the rack adjustment. Using last week’s rack adjustment gives a current Michigan spike line of $3.374964. The current average of all recently reported Michigan gas stations is $3.450, giving an average margin of 7.5036¢, which would mean we should not expect retail prices to go up today.
Further, New York November gasoline is down another 2.88¢ this morning.
I saw the spike line was $3.33-ish for Indiana, and prices in Fort Wayne held over the weekend, dropping just a couple cents. I gassed up this morning and even filled my 5 gallon mower can. This fall, the day of the spike has been terribly hard to predict. But it does look like $3.50 is the new normal, not $1.79 or even $2.39 or heaven forbid (so I thought 3 years ago) $3.29 gas.
Yea its more about the car you drive then the price of gas. Get a 4 cylinder jap car and you should be ok. Say bye bye SUV”S how long can you last.