Saturday, July 12, 2008

FROM CITIBANK, EVEN MORE PROOF THAT WE'RE IN AN OIL BUBBLE

DINOCRAT:
22 is a lot of times

Tim Evans of Citibank as quoted in the airline industry website Stop Oil Speculation Now:

“combined crude oil futures volume…reached a new record…about 22 times the level of global daily demand. With the futures market this much larger than the underlying physical market, we think the potential for a speculative bubble to form is certainly expanded…”

No doubt the fundamentals of supply and demand form a percentage of the reason for current high prices. That is always true in a bubble. However, when the trading of a commodity is 22x the demand for the commodity, speculation would appear to be a significant part of the explanation for prices.

And the amount of pension fund money in commodities is 20 times what it was just 5 years ago.

These two factors mean that MUCH more money is now chasing the same amount of oil and that’s why the price is so effin' high.

The money chasing oil has no relation to oil’s actual industrial use - only to it’s use as a hedge/investment.

And oil's actual use is retarded by it's current high price. The exorbitantly high price of oil is killing the goose.

The bubble will burst very soon.

2 comments:

  1. Where is all that money coming from and why is it going to commodities?

    ReplyDelete
  2. pension funds is one place.

    calpers made a fortune in oil futures last quarter.

    they have managers with formulas/programs: take money from equities and into commodities/oil.

    ReplyDelete