Quote Originally Posted by chrisdavis
I honestly doubt that we will ever see gass below 2 dollars a gallon ever again. There was no outrage, no boycotting, no anything. They have us paying higher prices with no complaints so why would they drop it. Exxon posted a record profit in the third quarter 9.xx billion(that was just the third quarter not for the year), followed very closely by Shell. And congress just granted the oil industry a huge tax break.



ok this stuff is annoying.

the profit margins were nearly the same.
there is a difference between PROFIT
and PROFIT MARGIN

for example.

say your company makes 1 million dollars a year.
now you subtract your operating costs which are 930,000
you made 70 000$ profit

now
to find the profit margin
divide the 70 000 by 1 000 000
you get
0.07
=
7%

now say the next year, you make 2 000 000
and you have double the operating costs of last year,
930 000 x 2 = 1 860 000
so subtract that from the revenues, you get
140 000

DOUBLE THE PROFITS! right? yes, but.
what is the profit margin you ask?

divide 140 000 by the revenues, 2 000 000

its still 0.07

while you can hype up everyone by saying profits were XXXXXXX
or in this case PROFITS DOUBLED!

they are the same percentage of last year.

So whats todays lesson?

Don't beleive the media hype.