Oil’s Endless Bid: Financial Players Have “Overrun” Energy Markets, Energy Trader Says

I heard someone on CNBC say that 70% of the stocks traded on the NYSE were held for less than 3 minutes. Speculation gone wild?

Wall Streeters must be put down like dogs

This the new reality folks! The same can be said for all commodities. Supply-and-demand for commodities has been juiced and skewed so much by speculative free liquidity that it will only take a huge bout of deflation and deleveraging to wring out these crazy gargantuan price gyrations.

In the meantime, jump right in and try your luck at the commodities gambling parlor folks! We can all be winners! :-)

The Fed is supplying the free money to fuel speculation. Once QE ends, speculation will become more costly and the bubble will burst. The chairman of the Fed is the chairman of speculation.

Our financial system is a joke - as this guy admits, our largest banks are using the taxpayer-guaranteed depository base of this country to speculate in the price of oil. Instead of helping the economy by lending to businesses and consumers, they harm the economy by creating higher prices and volatility in the oil and other critical commodity markets. OPEC just sits back and laughs at us as our banking system does their dirty work for them.

the truth is that without productive places to invest, money is going to flow to speculation. until people create enough demand to jum start production they are going to use all this qe money to flood speculative markets

Yes, speculation is the reason, not supply. To have it drilled into our heads that some crisis is the cause is absurd. They'll all play dice with the world until the wheels come off.

Another bubble, another pop.
Back to you, Bob...

There were times when we only had Millionaires in the good old USA, now we have an increasing number of BILLIONAIRES. Anybody remember when Bunker Hunt and his brother (both big time millionaires) were trying to corner the Silver market in 1980? I sure do and IF they were billionaires then, they could have done it and silver would be trading nearly at the same price as gold.
I fear that the billionaires are ganging up on the commodity market and making sure the price goes up and down. Remember they also need "swings" as they buy long and sell short once the buy contracts are in good shape, LOL. Can't lose IF you have enough money to control the market rather than "speculate" with your grandchildrens college fund, LOL

I would like to see a chart of oil prices against anything. Wether it be the dollar, supply, demand, the stock market, anything. I'm sure a chart comparison would show that it isn't connected to any of these things. It's nothing more than traders playing with the price for their own benefit. All commodities markets are nothing more than a giant casino.

The rich and connected get richer.
The common folks can't do anything about it because they fail to capitalize on their numbers.
Heck most will watch TV instead of study what is going on politically.
Just keep voting on sound bites.
Signed
Dumb and Dumber

gotta love those hedge funds.they are bottom feeders.some day our colleges will teach ethics.

Come on are you guys in total denial or just being paid to spin ?????

The dollar is the world's reserve currency.....it is losing value daily. Markets are flooded with sellers who want to be in other currencies. Saudi Arabia is importing millions and millions of new dollars from the price spikes and is immediately throwing them back into the currency markets for exchange causing the dollar value to drop even more. As everyone tries to unload dollars the exchange rate keeps falling.....supply and demand. Therefore the value of actual physical "stuff" that the world economy needs to function goes up.......food gas energy oil......because the dollar is worth less and commodities are all priced in dollars.

And to make things worse, everyone is selling treasuries too........there is only one place left to park the cash....commodities......there is so much demand to park cash in commodities that the prices are skyrocketing and players are sitting on the sidelines just waiting for a chance to get in.....but the long time buyers and market players have the game locked up.

Oil is definately a game of supply and demand, but not of usage of the oil.....ownership of the value of oil.

So yes, it is now a financial game......not a production/consumption game.

As the value of the dollar goes down, the value of your contract goes down, noone wants to hold too far in the future....but the demand is unprecedented at each new futures sale......and there is a demand for a higher price each auction cycle due to the declining dollar.

If things were priced in Australian dollars or yen or even Euro's this would be a completely different game. The world's reserve currency is failing and noone is spending anytime to stabilize it.....because there just isn't any other reserve option at this time. So owning commodities, which the world needs to function is the only safe bet short term. Noone is going to have trouble selling oil at any price.

We need to repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and get speculators out of the oil market!
Three years ago most investment banks were on the brink of extinction. Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns and 427 other banks went belly up. Banks that did survive received bailout and Tarp money from the federal government. The banks took our taxpayer money and invested in commodities and in the currency market. By January the oil market had hit bottom; oil was selling for $34 a barrel. So the banks and hedge funds invested in oil, betting that it would go up. After all, they had been previously successful in driving up the price to $140 dollars a barrel. They began hoarding oil, storing it in tank farms and on supertankers.
Then the bankers hired an army of oil traders to bid the price of oil up. Even though world consumption was down, they were successful at pumping oil up again with the resurrection of the big lie of "peak oil" and a few geopolitical crises'. Oil is now selling at over 100 dollars a barrel.
Instead of the price of oil being determined by supply and demand, the oil and currency traders now control the price of oil. These American and international bankers didn't believe that the Obama administration would be successful combating the crisis that these very banks created. As the deficit grew and the treasury printed more money to bail out the banks, their traders and analysts declared the Obama administration dead on arrival when it came to the economy. They bet that the US dollar would lose its value. The US dollar has lost between 25-30% in the last four years. They bid it down and they made lots! Their cynical efforts to make a buck impoverished all of us by devaluing our currency. When your currency becomes devalued, the cost of everything goes up, especially oil and other commodities.
The banks scored twice; first by betting that oil would go up, then shorting the greenback, insuring that oil would go up. Don't forget, we loaned the banks the money to do this, and for years those banks have made record profits.
Two years ago there was still a lot of idle money around that was frightened of the stock market, and the insolvency of banks. That money was put into the commodity markets and fueled the rise of the price of commodities world wide. It's been a good couple of years for Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan, and their commodity and currency trading subsidiaries. A bright guy who ran an oil trading subsidiary for Citi Bank made 100 million as compensation. Their hoarding practices have started to be emulated by other countries; we now see China, The US, and others building vast oil storage facilities to take advantage of climbing oil prices. OPEC, big oil and the bank's speculative efforts have and will cost American consumers billions.
Then there is the continued greed of oil producers. With the price so high, think of the money to be made! Problem is, there is no place to store it anymore and everyone continues to pump it out of the ground. And world consumption continues to be low.
Those of us who heat our homes, drive our cars, and use oil products in a myriad of ways, are paying way more than we should. And we have been for some time. Bernie Madoff ripped off his clients to the tune of 50 billion dollars, a monumental theft. So what do you call this oil market that has taken 50 times that amount? We have paid $2.5 trillion dollars more than we should! The irony of all of this is that we the taxpayers provided the seed money for this, the greatest rip off in history.
All of this hoarding and manipulation needs to end. Call your elected representatives and ask them to repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and get speculators out of the oil market!

Dan, buy a clue?
After 25 years in the business you still have nothing notable to say.

Another example of why oil should not be on the commodities market - things were much more stable when it wasn't, just a generation ago.

Buyers in the commodity markets should required to take possession of 5% of all of their purchases.

It seems market price is no longer determined by the consumer, the ones who actually buy/use the product, but by the people who have an interest in making money in the buying and selling of the product.

What gives?

The oil only goes down only when there is a threat like something to take it place.Once that threat is over then the price jumps back up.We need wind ,solar anything to get off oil.

Hello Aaron and Dan. The consumer is going to war more over food, oil, or both? The trend that Henry mentions may in fact lead to further instability, war and folks voting for the Donald. I'm speculating... Obama can't lower oil and food prices and increase productivity right? Right on! Vote Obama out! Have a great week gang! Frank out!