I told you it was speculators

[Jerrymac]

Who's to blame for rising oil prices? Speculators - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110427/cm_csm/379828

Oil prices have continued to rise despite mixed news on oil supply and demand, a diminishing chance of Saudi oil disruptions, and Japan’s human and economic catastrophe. Such price movements were even more dramatic when oil prices rocketed from $50 in February 2007 to over $147 per barrel in July 2008. Rapid swings in price, which are hard to connect to traditional market forces, indicate the influence of speculation.

[kathyp]

there is no doubt that they have some effect on the price.  they buy the way they do for a reason.  they are betting on which way the price is going to go over the longer term and trying to get in front of it.  there are other things that drive our prices up.  the dollar losing value.  the regulations on gas mixes.  the fear that we will need to buy more and more of our oil from other countries because of drilling restrictions here.  OPEC pricing .  speculators do not control those things, they respond to them.

[buzzbee]

Speculators lose sometimes too. This is when investors want the government to repay their losses on the market .

[hankdog1]

wish i had of speculated more able silver 6 or 7 years ago that 50 bucks i invested in 5 silver dollars is now worth about 250 bucks kick myself for not buying alot more i'd be outta debt if i just wasted my money there

[kathyp]

no kidding.  i thought about gold a few years ago and bought stocks instead.  the economy was good and gold wasn't doing much.  guess i wouldn't be a very good speculator

[BlueBee]

Do we need to bail out the speculators after oil and metals took such a huge nosedive this week? 

It’s been about 8 years since I traded future contracts, so the margin requirements may have changed a bit since then.  However the nature of the beast is it gives you high leverage on the contracts.  When things go wrong, you can see your account go to 0 in a week like this.  This was a brutal week for any momentum players long on futures.

My take is the big boys (Wall Street Investment Banks) sold a boat load of their contracts this week after coaxing the average Joes and Janes to jump into the markets on a momentum play over the last couple of months.  The big boys got out on top and average Joes and Janes got wiped out.  Now they will re-load and start the game all over again!