It's good to see gas prices down, but those annoying spikes that see prices jump by ten percent in a single day seems a bit over the top. This price volatility isn't justified. The people over at gasbuddy.com have all sorts of graphing tools and I've created one that compares Montreal gas prices to two random American cities, Austin, Texas and Balitmore, Maryland. Aside from the striking difference in price (we're paying almost double the price), look how stable and gradual price movements are in the US.
The pattern here is a large jump followed by a gradual followed decline. My research indicated that this pattern occurs all across Canada, but not in the USA. I think our retailers have some explaining to do...
You can beat these spikes by filling up regularly when the price is stable. Then you can ride out the couple of days after a spike, until the price falls again.
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It would be interesting to see the same graph with a single currency. Since US Dollars are the official currency of oil it seems to make sense that the US graph would be smoother since any currency fluctuations would cause the price of gas sold in Canada to fluctuate but not in the US.
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