Quote from 5Pillars:
Holding 126.15 and 126.45 levels short (July contract) and covered my 125.85 level at 125.05 for $.80 profit. Making some small profits while adjusting my cost basis of my core position higher with each new spike in crude - as stated before I am in for the $112's.
some encouragement:
Asia Times
May 6, 2008
By purchasing large numbers of futures contracts, and thereby pushing up futures prices to even higher levels than current prices, speculators have provided a financial incentive for oil companies to buy even more oil and place it in storage. A refiner will purchase extra oil today, even if it costs $115 per barrel, if the futures price is even higher.
As a result, over the past two years crude oil inventories have been steadily growing, resulting in US crude oil inventories that are now higher than at any time in the previous eight years. The large influx of speculative investment into oil futures has led to a situation where we have both high supplies of crude oil and high crude oil prices.
Compelling evidence also suggests that the oft-cited geopolitical, economic and natural factors do not explain the recent rise in energy prices - this can be seen in the actual data on crude oil supply and demand. Although demand has significantly increased over the past few years, so have supplies.
Over the past couple of years, global crude oil production has increased along with increases in demand; in fact, during this period global supplies have exceeded demand, according to the US Department of Energy. The US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently forecast that in the next few years, global surplus production capacity will continue to grow to between 3 and 5 million barrels per day by 2010, thereby "substantially thickening the surplus capacity cushion".
Dollar and oil link
A common speculation strategy amid a declining US economy and a falling US dollar is for speculators and ordinary investment funds desperate for more profitable investments amid the US securitization disaster to take futures positions selling the dollar "short" and oil "long".
F William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. He may be contacted at
info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net