[quote=arraya]I’ve read most all the oil speculation articles and they are shallow to say the least.
A: They do not address fundamentals which I clearly have stated trend up.
B: For every long contract purchased on behalf of a pension fund or index fund, somebody has to short oil. What we’ve been seeing is that speculators have been getting increasingly short as index fund long participation in the oil market increased.
Furthermore, during the second quarter of 2008, while the price of oil rose from $100 to $140, there were net investor outflows from energy-related exchange-traded funds that are long. In fact, investors bet an additional $270 million on energy shorts during the second quarter: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=ace77xJYOjNU&refer=e…. These shorts are turned into shorts in the futures market.
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The more short interest you have in a market the more bullish it tends to be. Shorts have to cover which create artificial demand. As far as the true numbers are no one knows because massive speculation has occurred on foreign exchanges which don’t have the transparency that American exchanges have.
The idea that for every buyer there is a seller is a fallacy. There is a contract bought for every contract sold but one large seller could sell to 100 different buyers. In stocks about 10% of participates own all the short interest.
Your link says that oil demand is down 2.3% year over year yet prices have more then doubled. That is not normal market behavior.
Here is cut from the WP article that you may not have read.
“Hedge funds and big Wall Street banks are taking advantage of loopholes in federal trading limits to buy massive amounts of oil contracts, according to a growing number of lawmakers and prominent investors, who blame the practice for helping to push oil prices to record highs.
The federal agency that oversees oil trading, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has exempted these firms from rules that limit speculative buying, a prerogative traditionally reserved for airlines and trucking companies that need to lock in future fuel costs.
The CFTC has also waived regulations over the past decade on U.S. investors who trade commodities on some overseas markets, freeing those investors to accumulate large quantities of the future oil supply by making purchases on lightly regulated foreign exchanges.
Over the past five years, investors have become such a force on commodity markets that their appetite for oil contracts has been equal to China’s increase in demand over the same period, said Michael Masters, a hedge fund manager who testified before Congress on the subject last month. The commodity markets, he added, were never intended for such large financial players.”
Hell even I have been trading oil contracts which is the equivalent of a shoe shine boy giving stock advice in 1929. LOL.
