Americas Fuel Prices

The 3-2-1 crack is what a refiner earns turning 3 barrels of crude into 2 of gasoline and 1 of distillate. A wide crack means products are holding their value even as crude falls — so pump and diesel prices need not follow crude down. It is the bridge between the barrel and the bill.

Paper benchmark margin — products vs benchmark crude. A refiner's cash margin runs lower after sour-crude differentials and energy costs, so read this as a product-tightness gauge, not refiner profit. Why a record crack isn't record profit →

US Energy Information Administration (EIA), daily spot prices · spot basis · latest 2026-08-11

When the blue-chip Dow holds while the tech-heavy Nasdaq breaks, breadth is narrowing — a late-cycle warning, and a risk-off read that tends to pull on oil demand. A spread above +5.5pp is the rare trigger level.

A ≈5.5pp+ spread over 7 sessions occurred on ~1% of days since 1971; 66.9% of those were in a bear phase within three months, vs a 24.8% baseline (MarketWatch / Ned Davis Research). A warning indicator, not a forecast — and a Dow-vs-Nasdaq split can be sector rotation rather than a market top.

Source: FRED — Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) & Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQCOM), daily closes · latest 2026-08-13