A few hundred people bought cabins on a luxury round-the-world cruise ship to live on, as homes and not as vacations. This week the operator suspended the voyage in Cambodia because fuel had gotten too expensive, and the residents were told to get off. NPR, NBC, CNBC and the BBC all ran it, probably because the picture is so clean: people with what they thought was a deed, standing on a dock with their luggage.

I read it as a hedging story. They believed they’d bought a place to live. What they’d bought was a claim on a voyage, and the voyage was a claim on diesel, and nobody was holding the diesel risk on their behalf. The ship burns fuel whether anyone’s home or not. With Brent around 110, the arithmetic about who is quietly subsidizing whom flips overnight. I’d bet very few buyers read the clause that says so.

It rhymes with Delta’s fuel bill up 62% earlier this month, except airlines can reprice a ticket tomorrow. A ship with prepaid residents can’t reprice anyone. A fixed-price promise sitting on a variable-cost input is one of the oldest ways to get hurt, and it never looks risky while the input is cheap.

Smaller things from the pile. The Fed is expected to hold today with a nod toward December. A site called 24/7 Wall St. published a piece saying October 27 has historically marked the autumn bottom, and I admire the timing, since “historically” does a lot of work when you’re reading it the next morning. Nelson Peltz offered $1.4 billion for Wendy’s and the stock jumped 15%, which means the market doesn’t think that’s the final number.

I keep wondering what the cruise line’s lawyers told the buyers about fuel surcharges.

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