Philosophy behind trading Commodity Futures
- Thread starter jay21
- Start date
Oil price manipulation
Not in the article but what does one call it when investment banks forecast higher oil prices, then rent oil tankers, take the physical delivery and then park those tankers offshore? Noone remembers 2007-2008?
Not in the article but what does one call it when investment banks forecast higher oil prices, then rent oil tankers, take the physical delivery and then park those tankers offshore? Noone remembers 2007-2008?
Wow, just what I was waiting for, you to validate my intellectual substance. Pretty full of yourself for someone so clueless. I'm sure the two facts are linked.
What I am deficient in is patience for people who seem to have never cracked open a history book and seen the results of suppressing free markets. Or even suppressing markets which are imperfectly free in favor of even less free markets.
The most tragic fact of life is that people with the least knowledge want to control things the most. Again, two facts I'm sure are linked. Wise men like Socrates will say "I know that I know nothing" while fools like those who criticize "speculators" for rising prices will say "I know better than anyone". The ability of the lower-capability members of the human species for accurate self-assessment is atrociously poor and they should be kept as far as possible from any real power.
Does this scenario actually make sense to you? Your knowledge of the markets really seems very shallow.
If I was the "lone oil producer", I'd be ECSTATIC with that scenario. I'd happily sell oil futures at $140 to the speculators. At the end of the month, I would then happily deliver on those oil futures... and pocket the $140 I had been guaranteed. I am in no danger of sitting on inventory.
The oil buyers who were speculating on price but didn't intend to hold physical will then have a lot of fun trying to sell their positions, as we get closer to delivery... and prices will plunge.
In reality, what happens is that speculators know perfectly well they don't want delivery, and they keep a very close eye on underlying supply/demand... if "speculative prices" ever left fundamentals, then you can be sure some informed industry arbitrager would be all over that, and happily eating up the free dollars.
All (informed) speculators are trying to do is predict where supply/demand will ultimately end up at the point of delivery.
Bizarre statement, and I have no idea where you're going with this. Of course you can live "without" oil and food... or at least you'd live differently. This is precisely why price discovery is important.
If I see prices for oil going through the roof, then I will as a consumer drive/fly less, as an investor invest in alternative energy, and as a producer keep drilling oil. In other words, higher oil prices are an invaluable signal for telling humanity how we should adjust our behavior.
And because of high futures prices in the grains, farmers across the world are clearing / plowing / planting more acreage than ever... because they have a very clear pricing signal that there is increased demand. And they can have confidence doing so, because they're locking in high grain prices *today*... rather than waiting 9 months from now to see what they will be after harvest.
Prices aren't random fictional numbers. They're very important signals that actors throughout "the economy" use to make decisions. Speculators can *only* play a role in helping make sure the prices are as accurate as possible. (And government only needs to play a role to make sure that manipulation of prices for the sake of manipulation does *not* happen... as is the case of the most recent prosecution by the CFTC.)