And the other neat thing is you get to speculate on all the competing official government actions and which way they will drive prices - [dump supply, ease restriction, dump cash - raising prices - ignore the economy we have to get rid of Trump - more regulation because building for people creates greenhouse gases and cutting trees removes a sink for green house gases. It's a wonderful world. But, at the end of the day it's just commodity, and supply and demand will balance out in the end.
Thank you. You are totally correct.
The futures market and speculators are what cause wild swings in any commodity of course. They make price takers of us all.
I hope they take a bath and choke on their speculation and greed.
If people want to understand the reason oil and gas prices are driven up look to the commodity markets. Before the first heating oil futures trades back in the early 80s there was almost no movement in oil and gas prices, not including the arab embargo shocks. There was an article, a small one, in Oil and Gas Journal the fall of 1983 or 84, I still have it but can’t remember the date. It was about the coming test movements in oil futures. I clipped the article and attached it to a memo to my staff saying this is the day the oil industry loses any control of our future. With this it will be hard to forecast prices in order to make investments. I also told them we have become no more than farmers. I believe I was dead right.
In my wayward youth I once declared my major to be Agricultural Economics. There was one brilliant professor I had in a couple of courses. I learned from him how farmers became price takers instead of price makers notwithstanding their unwitting and often unintentional act of over producing.