Heating oil spiked 92% and someone offered a £1,000 top-up. Study it
War breaks out in February, heating oil peaks 92% above normal, and 1.5 million UK households discover they are running unhedged commodity exposure with a radiator attached. The CMA has now recommended grid-style protections. Translation: the referee noticed the market four decades after kickoff.
Exhibit A in market microstructure: customer pays for 1,000 litres pre-war. Supplier delivers 500, refunds half, then offers the missing 500 for an additional £1,000 — that's repricing your own breached contract as a new product. Audacious. Illegal-adjacent. The customer escalated to the board via letter and got filled at the original price. Retail investor defeats the house: rare print, frame it.
Exhibit B: the neighbour who filled her 2,000-litre tank at £1,200 days before the invasion. That's not luck, that's inventory management — she's sitting on a position that appreciated four figures in a week and she's REDUCING consumption. Diamond hands, thermal edition.
The real trade: insulation, solar, heat pumps — she wants them, support 'isn't there', which means the demand is pooling behind a dam. When the dam opens, the installers print. Long jumpers meanwhile. NFA.