Based on historical data, the price of retail gasoline is very highly correlated with the price of crude oil. I believe that I provided you with this information a few weeks back, and I determined that:
RetailGasPrices - in cents/gallon = 3.28 * BarrellOfCrudeOil + 70 R^2 = 0.95
However, currently, the prices of retail gasoline does not reflect the high price of crude oil, and the entity which should reflect this is the earnings and share prices of the giant petroleum companies, such as XOM.
However, gasoline has still not risen to $3.65/gallon. Moreover, the giant petrol companies are still very profitable, and their shareprices/earnings do *NOT* seem to reflect this fact that their selling gas very cheaply (which is good for the consumer).
What's going on?