Gas prices are at an all-time high across America

• In the last week, oil prices have skyrocketed. Popular oil ETFs are up 57% year-to-date with the U.S. Oil Fund ( USO ), the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil ( UCO ) up 74%, and the Invesco DB Oil Fund ( DBO ) up 50%. Overall, the price of WTI crude rose from $66 per barrel on February 20 to $90.90 today.

• We take a look at how higher oil prices are affecting consumers in financial markets. Our findings: Gas prices rose 16% across America last week alone. We see that if market forecasts prove correct, gas prices could rise to $7 per gallon in California by the end of March.

• An analyst named NVIDIA just named his top 10 AI stocks in 2010. Get it for free here.

The conflict in Iran is sending shock waves through the world’s energy markets, and American consumers are feeling it at the pump. Oil prices are rising rapidly, and the question is no longer whether gas prices will hurt: how bad it is.

Nate Silver, famous for “calling” the 2008 election, published an article today detailing how gas prices went vertical.

Let’s see how much gas prices will deteriorate in the coming weeks and compare them to historical ranges.

READ: The analyst named NVIDIA in 2010 Just naming his top 10 AI stocks

According to AAA, the national average gas price today is $3.45 per gallon. A week ago, the average was $2.98 per gallon — a 16% increase in a week. For context, the all-time record average was $5.016 per gallon, set for June 22, 2022.

How high can prices go? Nate Silver points to Polymarket data showing gas prices hit $4.50 at the end of March, 63% of the time, with a 34% chance prices breach $5.00. Put another way, there’s a 34% chance that oil prices will hit AAA all-time highs.

A note of caution, while prediction markets are common sounds good Predicting future results, there is still only a $40,000 bet on gas prices by the end of March. This means that it is a very small market and can be crossed by small bets.

Right now, gas prices have risen dramatically across America.

• In California, the average is $5.159 per gallon.

• On the other end of the spectrum, the Kansas price is just $2.911 per gallon.

It’s harder to get to more expensive states. Kansas is 16% cheaper than the national average. California is 50% very hard. Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, and Hawaii are the only other states where gas prices average more than $4 per gallon.

If the bet in the Polymarket forecast markets proves correct and gas rises to $4.50 per gallon by the end of March, that would be a 30% jump from today’s prices. If California saw a jump in line with the national average, consumers could pay a staggering $7.73 per gallon (And that’s just for normal gas!).

Of course, oil markets are dynamic, and there is no guarantee that any part of the country will jump more or less than the average, but it is worth noting how high prices will come in the next month.

The worst gas prices that many consumers remember came right before the Great Financial Crisis. In July 2008, oil prices were recorded at $147.27 per barrel. But the U.S. was a different energy player at the time — producing just 5 million barrels a day, about 6% of global production.

Today, the United States produces 22.8 million barrels per day — 20% of the world’s supply — more than double the output of Saudi Arabia. So why are prices rising?

Iran isn’t just threatening its 4.6 million bpd — it’s threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz to cut off supplies from Saudi Arabia (10.8 million bpd), the United Arab Emirates (4.5 million), Iraq (4.5 million), Kuwait (2.8 million) and Qatar (1.8 million). This is a very large volume in a perfectly balanced global market.

WTI crude futures have already moved from $66 per barrel on February 20 to $90.90 today, per CNBC. The oil shock has already arrived. The pain at the pump is just beginning.

Wall Street is pouring billions into AI, but many investors are buying the wrong stocks. The analyst who first identified NVIDIA as a buyback in 2010 — before its 28,000% run — has identified just 10 new AI companies that he believes can deliver returns beyond that point. One dominates the $100 billion equipment market. Bill addresses the single biggest obstacle to maintaining AI data centers. The third segment is a net play in the optical network market that is quadrupling. Most investors haven’t heard of half of these names. Get a free list of all 10 stocks here.