How can prices fluctuate so wildly in such a short time? Even semiconductors took some time to elevate prices.
It would seem semiconductors are coming back to normalcy though. All the parts I've used in my designs that had >52 week lead times a year ago, are in stock now.
What are others seeing, normal semiconductor prices, or scarce egg prices?
Just look at Nat. Gas prices. Normal price is around $5. Russian bears (energy bull in bear skin) push it to $10. Western bears push it down to 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2. WTF, $2 N.G. Don't we have a war going on?
Bird flu? If a lot of laying hens get slaughtered suddenly to block infections there won't be as many eggs around and the price will go up.
It depends on where they are looking, and what they are looking at. Markets can be quite complicated - eggs just get eaten, while semiconductors get incorporated into lots of different products which may be doing very different jobs.
Supply and demand. Mere mention of a shortage of something drives the price higher and causes immediate shortages. UK has crazy egg prices and availability right now because of a combination of bird flu and the vastly increased price of grain to feed the laying birds. Fixed price supermarket contracts mean the egg suppliers can't make money so they cease production and don't restock with new laying birds. There is a ~12 month lag built into restocking with chicks to having laying hens again.
Supply and demand on a finite and/or decreasing production base. Worldwide the price of fertiliser and chickenfeed has gone up enormously because of the war in Ukraine - the result is much more expensive food or in some cases none at all if the farmers can't sell it for a profit.
Semiconducors are up a bit if they are in stock. Some are *much* longer lead times. Don't even think about using chips that are not normally stocked in the UK!
UK now has the brilliant Brexit induced problem for electronics manufacture that major US chip suppliers distribution centres have moved from the UK into the EU to places with cheap labour and land.
Ordering small numbers of chips that were in stock in the US used to be under 60 hours door to door. Now with Brexit my last order took nearly 3 weeks. One of the massive "benefits of Brexit" to British industry. Much of the delay (2 weeks) was clearing UK customs!
The Boris famously said "Fuck Business" and he wasn't kidding.
Really? Who would have thought?
Actually, the chip shortage is easing from what I can see.
That's what happens when they give people the right to elect their own leaders. We had carrot top for four years and we have a threat of a recurrence, although it is just unimaginable that people didn't get enough the first time around.
That's what happens when the media doesn't do it's job and point out when the people running for the top job are lying to the electorate.
Trump has been a liar all his life, and his supporters still haven't got the message. Boris Johnson wasn't much better - long before he was a politicians he got fired as reporter because he'd invented quite a few quotes, His pro-Brexit campaigning was famously deceitful - electing him as prime minister suggests that the British electorate is just as gullible as the Americans - possibly more so. Trump didn't win the US popular vote, but got in via the electoral college.
Boris Johnson won a UK election in 2019 as leader of the UK Conservative Party, so he really did have a mandate, even if his sleazy habits eventually got him slung out.
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