The futures can be voliatile, that's fine since it's not real. What ticks me off is the gas stations being super sensitive to minor changes in the oil future price. It's not like the future price is what they're currently paying for oil, or are ever likely to pay, thanks to distributor contracts, not to mention they're selling refined stock not crude oil. It is amazing there is no 'slack' in the supply chain... Daddy War-Bucks twitches the chain on one end with crude futures, and thanks to constructive interference from wave propagation along the chain, we get a 25 cent increase followed by a 5 cent decrease at the pumps.