One: of course there's a ton of hedge fund money in the mkts. You get a nice 'duh' for that. Hedge funds, though, can easily trade the short side of a mkt ust as they do the long side, and they most certainly will do when their analysis favours getting short. The OJ mkt is a very recent example of this. Sugar #11 was an example last year.
The fact that hedge funds are generally long energies is temporarily bullish. However, you've only to look at what happened to Amaranth **and** none other than the Bank of Montreal to understand that those who make one-way bets can and do get utterly slaughtered when the mkt turns on them...which it always does, sooner or later.
Two, wet supply simply is not keeping up with real live wet demand, hasn't been doing so since roughly July-August 2002. The CEO of Shell knows this; he may or may not have said as much in the interview you quote. Every (reasonable) trader on NYMEX and ICE, and SIMEX, and DUX, and probably Bombay knows it, too. This is the ex-cap figure at work, down from 6.5MM bbl/day in mid-2002 to something like 2.8MM bbl/day now -- and which hit its low in Jan a year ago, roughly 0.6 MM bbl/day, which, if you look, is when prices started going wild. Not just after Katrina and Wilma, but fully 90 days later.
Yammer on as you will; you haven't a clue about what drives energy prices and don't appear to be likely to acquire one in the near future.
If you'd care to try to learn, you can find VERY accurate figures and some really quite excellent analysis by subscribing to WTRG Economics. The Russian Central Bank, to name just one large player, finds Jim Williams' analysis invaluable.
Meantime, I'm diagonally ratio-spreading the NG mkt, and short the V gas crack -- that's SHORT, boyo -- and working on making a nice packet this year. Bolder traders are doing other trades, and, y'know what...we all simply laugh at guys like you.
Ta-ta. Have fun nursing your hatred for ''speculators''.
Interesting posts, but from the shared animosity towards one another, I still don’t observe any realistic solution to reducing the risk to American economy when the consumer price for fuel increases roughly 50% in a 2 year period and is now suggested to be at risk of rising another 50% in the next 2 years.
All the time, the same justifications are being promoted by globalists who also buy into the argument that the planet is now warming 2-20 degrees more than eternity past so the common man must simply sit back and await being burdened moreso by globalism.
IMHO, 20 years ago I wouldn’t buy into a ‘conspiracy theory’ regarding fuel pricing. Today, those who foment conspiracy in globalism have read the skepticism of upper middle class educated leaders to conspiracy theories and use it as a cover to actually practice some of the most heinous conspiracies imaginable. I haven’t observed anything justifying the jump in oil prices to explain the recent financial swings other than a orchestrated pricing to promote globalism.