If you observe snapshots in time you’d understand what the facts are at that point in time. If you observe the trends at a point in time, you’d understand what things are likely to look at a future point in time. To me the interesting and informative bit is the trend and its short and long term projections. E.g. that it points to peak oil consumption within a couple of years and that it points to reduction of the leverage of OPEC and the US over China along any downstream effects.