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Comment by lazide | Hacker News Reader

The poster is saying the stakes in oil/gas are high enough that someone IS already paying millions of dollars to have dedicated staff follow projects and give people a heads up if anyone seems actually close (or it seems remotely feasible) - and you'd see it reflected in various market moves, either by hedge funds or by the companies themselves in how they invest on projects.

Which is probably true.

I've heard from friends of some of the typical shenanigans played among state actors involving oil and gas, and that would be the least underhanded thing going on.

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I understand what they are saying.

I am saying that the timeframe between a breakthrough in fusion, and it having a measurable effect on energy usage is so large that "money" will not reflect it with immediate and large moves in the market.

Then you don’t understand what they’re saying?

‘Breakthroughs’ like fusion typically does are useless. Something viable is not.

When something viable happens, you’ll see markets move, because market pricing is based on expectations of future performance, not current performance.

The comment I was responding to was specifically talking about oil and gas futures. Not general stock prices, or which projects are started.

My non-expert understanding is that Futures are a specific financial instrument with set expiry dates, and are about locking in prices for these commodities at a certain date. The vast majority of these would be expiring in under low digit years. I am arguing that the ramp up time for fusion to go from "feasible design" to "having a significant impact on the the amount of oil/gas consumed" is much longer than most futures expiry dates, and would therefore have little impact.

That said, I guess people can (and do) buy futures with expiry dates for more than 10 years out, presumably they just have to find a counter party. Is this a significant amount invested? Bringing me back around to my original (and honestly asked) question: How many years out do oil/gas futures project?

Ah, I see what you mean.

For me, I'd take 'viable' to mean something like a demonstration plant actually working somewhere, a team with the ability (somewhat proven) to reproduce it at scale, and after that exists the math pencils out it's profitable even on a risk adjusted basis.

At which point, it's a real thing that will happen, and prices will start to adjust based on the likely adoption curve (with various speculative values of the curve of course too).

Which yes, may or may not change future values for delivery depending on the timeline.

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