Is it my imagination or is there a connection?

Question

Morgan Stanley predicts oil prices to rise to $150 a barrel in July and they immediately jump $10 per barrel. And whichever commodities trader who purchased 10 million barrels of oil just made $100 million which comes out of my pocket. Should there be a law against publicly trading oil? Should people who do not drill, ship, refine the oil be making billions in profits at our expense? I of course am not buying the wallstreet explanation that that is only a small percentage of the cost of gas. What can be done? Isn't this something we have just started doing a few years ago? Trading oil publicly?

Answer 1

I agree with you and gosh137.  But if you can't beat them, join them perhaps?  You can buy an ETF that tracks the spot price of crude oil through the use of oil futures.  There's a few of these ETFs out there, but USO is the most popular.

Answer 2

The only people that should be allowed to trade oil futures are the ones with the ability to physically accept delivery of the shipment.

Answer 3

your right it is all a scam or profit gouging but on the other hand nobody says you have to buy gas.

Answer 4

Because of the absolutely critical and lately extremely negative effect on the global economy , oil-related trading should be OUTLAWED.

What is happening is essentially monumental price manipulation by investors who are artificially inflating the value of oil WAY beyond its true worth.

This is a sick game of greed that presently is legal, and the world is waiting for someone to do something about it.

Something MUST be done because the price per barrel of oil is RACING the world toward an APOCALYPTIC situation.

Is keeping the marketplace status quo worth a world war being waged over oil resources? It will SURELY come to that, and that end IS IN SIGHT, now.

Answer 5

Cadillac is right on the money.  Crude oil futures started tradubg in 1983.  I am sure that current prices are due to speculators.  Its crashed twice since it started trading on the futures market.  And it will again.  But the futures market provides a liquid market for producers.  Just as it does for any other commodity traded.  If its any consolation to you, other commodity producers, especially ag commodities, dislike the commodities markets because they dont like someone in Kansas City or New York, who never touches the product, setting the price.  But without the futures market there would be much less liquidity and production costs and prices would probably be even higher.

Answer 6

Excuse me!?  $100 million comes out of your pocket??  Are you $100 million poorer today than you were one year ago?  I don't think so.  

You obviously don't understand the commodities market place, and you are repeating something you heard someone else say who doesn't understand the commodities market either.

Commodity trading does not cost you anything unless you're a trader.  The one who lost the $100 million is the trader who sold the commodity.  But, did he really lose?  He collected $100 million.  The only thing he lost is the appreciation he would have realized if he had held on to his shares.  

Either way, it did not cost you one cent.  Commodities have been traded for many decades.  It's a perfectly legitimate business.  

And, no, there should not be a law against it.  We can't go around passing laws against everything someone does not understand. If we did that, we'd have to pass a law against women, because no man understands them.  And, then were would we be?

The fact that oil jumped in price immediately after Morgan Stanley's prediction would only indicate that Morgan Stanley was probably correct.  No mystery there.

I predict that gas for your car will probably be $4.00 a gallon or more all over the country by July 4th of this year.  Now, does that mean I'm "in on" something and doing something illegal if I'm correct?  Not hardly.  It just means I made an accurate prediction.

Be safe, and live a long, healthy life.