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...and it *was* down to $94.13! Wouldn't it be great to see it go below $89.99 by the end of the day? ;OD

There are 5 contracts that I intend to examine to get a start on finding some kind of number to quantify Liberal Bias on Intrade. The first contract is 2008.PRES.CLINTON(H) which seems like it should have zero value. This gives a good glimpse at a baseline bias value. Taking into account the volume of the contract, bias might be expressed as Price * Volume of such a baseline contract. In this case it's 3.2 * 522834, but that's unnecessarily high because the volume is over the life of the contract. So I would use the volume since the convention ended,...

Now whose got yer Bounce, Baby Bama Baller?!? Dat B SARACUUUDAAHHHH!!!!!!

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Proposals to reign in wallet-draining gasoline prices by curbing speculation in oil markets would likely increase costs at the pump instead of trimming them, a University of Illinois economist says. Scott Irwin argues congressional efforts to curb trading by speculators is a “misguided witch hunt” that ignores the root of America’s energy problem – a finite global oil supply that has been stretched thin by surging demand in China, India and other developing countries. “We need to have a real national debate about issues related to both the demand side and the supply side of our energy...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The government charged an oil trading firm Thursday with manipulating oil prices in the first complaint to be announced since the regulators began a new investigation into wrongdoings in the energy markets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Optiver Holding, two of its subsidiaries and three employees with manipulation and attempted manipulation of crude oil, heating oil and gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange. "Optiver traders amassed large trading positions, then conducted trades in such a way to bully and hammer the markets," CFTC Acting Chairman Walt Lukken said at a press conference. "These...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A massive $3.2 billion trading loss on oil futures and derivatives sank high flying energy trader SemGroup LP, which at one time billed itself as the 14th-largest private company in the United States.

ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska | This place is a Zen thing. The only way to tell you’ve wandered in is the absence of anything saying so. No signs. No road to get here. No advice from government stewards about what to seek out or what to avoid. No entrance fees and no officially licensed T-shirt. This isn’t just wilderness, contend those who want to keep it pristine, but a sanctuary for wildness. It is also oil country. With just the last half of the last year of the petroleum-friendly Bush administration remaining, the window for opening the land to...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices extended a post-July 4th descent Tuesday - falling more than $9 a barrel over two days - as Iran's president downplayed concerns about possible war in the Middle East and investors anticipated falling demand due to high gasoline prices. The price of light sweet crude for August delivery tumbled $5.33 to settle at $136.04 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the lowest level in nearly two weeks, and followed a drop of $3.92 Monday. Iran:Concerns over supply disruptions in the oil-rich Middle East eased after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said...

Congress is back in session and oil prices are still through the roof, so pointless or destructive energy legislation is all but guaranteed. Most likely is stiffer regulation of the futures market, since Democrats and even many Republicans have so much invested in blaming "speculators" for $4 gas. Congress always needs a political villain, but few are more undeserving. Futures trading merely allows market participants to determine the best estimate – based on available information like supply and demand and the rate of inflation – of what the real price of oil will be on the delivery date of the...

Without a doubt, crude oil is the most important commodity on our planet. Hypothetically if it vanished overnight, our entire modern world would collapse. No goods could move without the oil-derived transportation fuels, so virtually all trade would implode. Unlike nearly every other major commodity, there is just no economically-viable substitute for oil. And the fundamentals driving oil’s secular bull are unparalleled in their strength. As Asia awakens and enters the modern era, global demand for oil is rising relentlessly. Despite today’s unprecedented prices, demand remains strong all over the world. And of course once oil is burned, it is...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Atlanta hedge fund manager Michael Masters has been a star witness in two recent Congressional hearings on how speculators are supposedly driving up oil prices. Masters and I don't see eye-to-eye on this issue, so I was surprised to get a call from him after my "Don't Blame The Oil Speculators" column went up on Fortune.com last week. Masters contends that without speculators, the price of oil would be $65 or $70 a barrel. He points out that the amount invested in commodities index products has risen from $13 billion to $260 billion in five years,...

<p>Before the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission starts scrutinizing the role that speculators may have played in driving up fuel and food prices, investigators may want to take a look at price swings in a commodity not in today's news: onions.</p>

LEGISLATIVE COMMENTS May 22, 2008 Via Facsimile and Overnight Delivery The Honorable Dianne Feinstein 331 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510 Dear Senator Feinstein: I write on behalf of IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. (“ICE”) and ICE Futures Europe in response to recent comments regarding the role of regulated, global exchanges that provide centralized and transparent price discovery for commodity markets. Specifically, with regard to energy, ICE has strived to demonstrate leadership in supporting efforts of both the CFTC and Congress further enhancing market transparency. As you know from our work together on the 2008 Farm Bill, ICE strongly supports the objective...

Congress will focus on energy speculation on Monday, as some lawmakers blamed Wall Street traders for record oil and gasoline prices... Many in Congress have suggested the closing of a provision in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that critics call the "Enron loophole..." The provision allows oil futures to be traded in markets outside of the jurisdiction of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission... Proposals have included requiring foreign exchanges to provide more information about crude oil trades, limiting the number of contracts speculators are allowed to hold, increasing the amount of money speculators need to put up to...

SEN. John McCain recently called for a "thorough and complete investigation of speculators" to see if they've driven up oil prices. And Senate Democrats plan a new bill aimed at commodity speculators - a witch hunt that's clearly about oil. But, much as politicians would like to blame speculators, it's just not so. For starters, there's nothing about futures or options that makes it any more attractive to bet that commodity prices will go up than to bet they'll go down. Guess wrong on the direction, and you lose money. The "blame speculators" theorists have several worries. Investors in oil...

The stock market plunged 170 points this morning and oil jumped over $3, allegedly based on a New York Times story that Israel is carrying out military exercises as a rehearsal to bombing Iran. But actually, the Times story, written by the very able war correspondent Michael R. Gordon, is talking about Israeli training exercises from early June, not now. ItÂ’s a rehash story with some new details. And it does in fact confirm the market rumors of June 5 and 6 that Israel was planning an Iranian attack to stop the rogue stateÂ’s nuclear-weapons program. Recall that oil jumped...

Hedge funds and big Wall Street banks are taking advantage of loopholes in federal trading limits to buy massive amounts of oil contracts, according to a growing number of lawmakers and prominent investors, who blame the practice for helping to push oil prices to record highs. The federal agency that oversees oil trading, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has exempted these firms from rules that limit speculative buying, a prerogative traditionally reserved for airlines and trucking companies that need to lock in future fuel costs. The CFTC has also waived regulations over the past decade on U.S. investors who trade...

More on the possible contribution of index fund investment to recent commodity price moves. We and many others have been discussing whether the surge in investment fund purchases of long positions in commodity futures contracts may have been a factor contributing to the spot prices of those commodities beyond what would be warranted by considerations of physical supply and demand. John Mauldin shares an interesting graphic from Deutsche Bank researchers, showing that the prices of a number of commodities in which no futures market exists have increased even more dramatically than those traded on major exchanges.

Bursting the Speculative Bubble - May 30, 2008 The Bubble may be ready to burst. The CFTC pushed by Congress may be sharpening the point on the pin that bursts the price balloon. Futures, Institutional Investors and Oil Prices. The volume of email commenting on the Michael Masters testimony before the Senate was surprising to say the least. While we disagree with some of his comments comparing the number of futures contracts to physical barrels, we do agree with the basic analysis and believe it helps explain some of the oil price increase over the last few ears. Since all...

The global financial system these days is beginning to look like a giant Whac-a-Mole game--when we think we've knocked down one speculative bubble, another one just like it pops up. The latest is the commodities bubble--everything from oil and natural gas to gold, copper, wheat and rice....Like the credit bubble, this speculative bubble in commodities has badly distorted the workings of key markets and sectors of the global economy....this bubble is creating vast new wealth for some, including brokers, traders and investment houses who have gorged on fees and trading profits. The difference this time, however, is that even before...

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) - Significantly raising margin requirements on oil futures trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NMX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) would not rein in speculative investors and bring down crude prices, U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Friday. Many U.S. lawmakers blame hedge funds, pension fund managers and other speculative investors for pushing up prices for crude oil and other commodities to record levels. "I don't think that the margin requirements per se are going to have any impact on it," Bodman said in an interview on CNBC television. Legislation is pending in the U.S. Senate...

...Many banks and investment firms have come out to defend the rise in oil prices, saying that it is based on fundamentals and that prices could rise much further. While they go on saying this and prices move upward, open interest in crude futures contracts has been moving steadily downward since a high of 1.58 million last July to 1.36 million now. What’s more, in the recent oil spike, open interest actually fell 8% in a week as oil moved up over 2.6%. Could this be a sign of a short squeeze, with small traders who had shorted oil closing...

The price of crude oil today is not made according to any traditional relation of supply to demand. It is controlled by an elaborate financial market system as well as by the four major Anglo-American oil companies. As much as 60% of today's crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price. How? First, the role of the international oil exchanges in London and New York is crucial to the game. Nymex...

NEW YORK - A search for low-risk investments amid a U.S. economic slowdown has prompted the withdrawal of nearly $10 billion worth of crude oil futures bets by hedge funds and other large speculators in the past two weeks, according to major energy trader Goldman Sachs. The big exit comes as oil prices have slumped more than 10 percent since reaching an intraday record of $100.09 a barrel on Jan. 3. The drop, which has come on speculation that a U.S. slowdown would make a big dent in global crude oil demand, could be exacerbated if the funds, which still...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2008 – As U.S. forces continue to pursue al Qaeda terrorists across Iraq, American and Iraqi diplomats are preparing to negotiate future relations between the two nations, senior U.S. military and diplomatic officials said today. Flanked by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq; U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker; and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, President Bush delivers a statement Jan. 12, 2008, during a visit to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, before traveling to Bahrain. White House photo by Eric Draper   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq...

Republicans (In alphabetical order): Democrats (In alphabetical order):

Soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade hit their highest levels since 1973 on strong technical buying and bullish long-term fundamentals, which included concern over securing enough U.S. soybean acres for next spring. U.S. soybean acreages have fallen sharply as farmers jumped to corn amid a rally in prices of the other crop last year. In Friday's trading, CBOT soybeans for January surged as much as 17.25 cents to $11.78 a bushel. They closed at $11.77-1/2, up 16.75 cents CBOT corn for March rose as much as 10.5 cents to a 11-year high of $4.48 a bushel on indications...

WASHINGTON: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and U.S. futures exchanges are fighting efforts by the U.S. Congress to give two regulators authority over the $4.2 trillion commodities market, a move they say will drive trading overseas. At issue is whether the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, armed with new powers, has the right to levy fines against the failed hedge fund Amaranth Advisors for allegedly manipulating natural gas futures prices.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices surged above $85 a barrel Monday for the first time after OPEC said crude production by non-member countries is likely falling even as global demand for oil is rising. Prices were also supported by concerns Turkish forces will pursue Kurdish rebels into Iraq, disrupting oil supplies, and by technical buying by investment funds. Despite the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' decision last month to boost its production by 500,000 barrels per day beginning next month, the rest of the world will likely produce 110,000 fewer barrels of oil per day than expected in the...

The gold traders who know what they're doing, the savvy usually non contrarian gold Commercial Traders, are going massively short. They added a very respectable 17,083 short gold futures and options contracts in the latest report/5 day period ending 9-18-07, and, a massive 52,000+ short gold futures and options contracts in the previous report (possibly the largest weekly change I've ever seen), while also trading long in recent weeks (added 1303 long futures and options contracts in the latest report for the 5 day period ending 9-18-07, and, over 10,000 long futures and options contracts in the previous report), see...

Terascale still moving forward With our time at IDF quickly drawing to a close, we are in the final stretch of content from the show.  While I didn’t get to the keynotes on the morning on mobility, we have the general basis of their contents here as well as some other interesting topics like terascale processors and Intel’s upcoming Extreme .Terascale Computing UpdateLast year at IDF Intel first started to demonstrate and discuss their terascale computing research project that featured a that was a dramatic shift from anything Intel had done in the past.  The was built out of 80...

So what are people missing? I have never seen the gap between reality and the perception of reality as big as it is right now. The perception of what I call Chindia, the idea that demand growth globally is robust and is going to be led by the emerging-market economies of China and India, is still strong. It is a great idea. But when you look at the data, you will see it doesn't match, and when you talk about peak oil and see what is happening to non-OPEC supply, there is a problem because supply growth this year is...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures prices rose sharply Wednesday, briefly climbing above a record $80 a barrel after the government reported a surprisingly large drop in crude inventories and declines in gasoline supplies and refinery activity. The report from the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration suggested oil supplies are tightening as demand remains strong. That's why oil prices are rising despite OPEC's decision on Tuesday to boost crude production by 500,000 barrels per day this fall, analysts said. Despite Wednesday's jump, oil is still well below inflation-adjusted highs hit in early 1980. Depending on the adjustment, a $38 barrel...

NEW YORK, Aug 16 (Reuters) - U.S. gold futures dropped more than 2 percent early on Thursday amid a global rout in equities markets, despite the precious metal temporarily cutting losses after the U.S. Federal Reserve provided cash infusions into the banking system. Silver futures followed gold to fall nearly 4 percent, while platinum was down 2 percent and palladium plummeted almost 5 percent. "We are basically just following the stock market. It seems like people are just pulling money out of everywhere," one floor trader said. At 10:57 a.m. EDT (1457 GMT), most-active gold for December delivery (GCZ7: Quote,...

OIL FUTURES: Nymex Crude Down $3; Stock-Led Selloff Quickens NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Crude oil futures headed lower toward $70 a barrel Thursday as a sell-off accelerated amid concerns credit market turmoil will cut demand and as storms looked less likely to affect U.S. Gulf of Mexico production. The front-month September light, sweet crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was down $3.09, or 4.2%, at $70.24 a barrel. Prices are now down more than 10% from their intraday record $78.77 reached Aug. 1. Brent crude on the ICE futures exchange fell $2.69 to $68.95 a barrel. The Dow Jones...

I'm not sure I fully understand how futures work ...

The Iowa Electronic Markets, the big daddy of the political prediction markets, is consistently better at forecasting winners than pre-election polls. (Read a 2003 Slate "Explainer" about prediction markets here.) If a single prediction market is wiser than the pundits and the polls, imagine how wise all the prediction markets are together. That's the idea behind Slate's "Political Futures," which offers a comprehensive guide to all the big political prediction markets. From now until Election Day 2008, we'll publish regular updates of the key data from Iowa Electronic Markets, Intrade.com, Newsfutures.com, and Casualobserver.net. (Casualobserver has not yet launched its 2008...

Per FR policy, Bloomberg is link only... May 9 (Bloomberg) -- The Taiwan Stock Exchange plans to merge with the island's smaller bourse and futures market, creating a ``one-stop service'' in an attempt to draw overseas investors and stem an outflow of companies. ``The integration of those markets is very urgent,'' Chairman Gordon Chen said in an interview in Taipei. The exchange has to provide a ``one-stop service for investors to improve efficiency and lower costs,'' Chen said. Chen is trying to halt the loss of companies to exchanges such as Hong Kong's, which don't have the same restrictions on...

During last month's debate among Democratic presidential candidates, NBC's Brian Williams asked Hillary Clinton, "How is America a better place because of all these burgeoning hedge funds?" He was referring to the loosely regulated investment vehicles that frequently generate massive returns for their wealthy investors by using debt to leverage huge bets on movements in the commodity futures market and other financial arenas. Considering her extraordinary success during 1978 and 1979, when, as a novice trader, she turned a $1,000 investment into a $100,000 profit in the highly risky cattle-futures market, Clinton was the right person to ask. Today, hedge...

SOMEONE slipped this little bomb wrapped up like a present under your Christmas tree: Starting next month, the New York Mercantile Exchange is going to let average investors speculate on the price of oil and gasoline.... ...The wire service Bloomberg reported right before the holiday that Nymex will begin trading in a weighted energy index "designed to attract small investors." Well, lucky for us! As anybody with a car knows, the price of fuel has dropped about 25 percent from its peak. That's where the Nymex's little bomb in a box comes in. After having lost a bundle when energy...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- November crude dropped 93 cents to close at $57.59 a barrel Wednesday, marking the contract's weakest closing level since June 2005 as traders eyed the latest news from key oil producers and awaited Thursday's data on U.S. petroleum supplies. November unleaded gasoline fell 1.65 cents to close at $1.4503 a gallon and November heating oil closed at $1.672 a gallon, down 0.89 cent. November natural gas fell 31.6 cents, or 4.9%, to end at $6.15 per million British thermal units

Intel Terascale Brings 80 Cores To Your DesktopIf you were impressed with dual core technology and quad core processors seem a bit like overkill, how about Terascale processing with 80 cores? Sound far fetched? Intel doesn’t think so. Head on over to PCPerspective for the rest of the article. For our discussions here, the term “terascale” will refer to a processor with 32 or more cores. Moving away from the “large” cores seen in the Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 lines from Intel and AMD, the cores in a terascale processor will be much simpler (kind of like we...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil jumped 3 percent to over $63 a barrel on Wednesday as expectations that producing cartel OPEC may slash output to defend prices countered rising U.S. inventories. U.S. crude rose $2.03 to $63.04 a barrel by 1853 GMT, surging back from a low of $60.10 hit after data showing large builds in U.S. gasoline and distillates stocks. London Brent gained $2.24 to trade at $62.36 a barrel. Oil in New York has fallen from a peak of $78.40 in July because of rising U.S. fuel stocks, easing economic growth and diminishing political tensions over Iran's nuclear...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices fell to a new six-month low below $60 a barrel on Monday as news of BP restoring output at Prudhoe Bay added to a sense of healthy global supplies. U.S. light, sweet crude for November fell 56 cents to $59.99 a barrel in Globex electronic trading. By 0108 GMT it stood 61 cents lower at $59.94 a barrel, deepening a seven-week rout that has knocked more than $17 a barrel off prices. Prices fell below the previous $60.00 a barrel low posted on September 20. Previous frontmonth October was reported last week to have fallen...

Commercial property contracts based on indexes; 10 planned The Chicago Mercantile Exchange said Wednesday that it will offer futures and options on commercial real estate, allowing investors to bet on swings in the value of the $5.3 trillion U.S. market. The contracts, based on indexes developed by San Francisco-based Global Real Analytics LLC, will begin trading in the first quarter of 2007, the Merc said. The exchange will list 10 cash-settled contracts: a composite index, five regional indexes and contracts based on retail, office, apartments and warehouse properties. "There's quite a bit of risk out there," said Felix Carabello, the...

LONDON (Reuters) -- Oil prices tumbled more than a dollar Wednesday, falling below $68 a barrel and breaking a key support level. U.S. light crude for October delivery fell $1.15 to $67.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For U.S. crude, the 200-day moving average, considered a funds buy/sell trigger, was effective around $67.50. Prices have fallen by more than $11 from a record of $78.65 hit on Aug. 8 when concerns of supply disruption ran high. Since then, diplomatic efforts to try to resolve Iran's dispute with the West have eased worries of possible disruption of the...

EW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures tumbled early Monday as traders moved to unwind the hurricane premium built into prices late last week as Tropical Storm Ernesto weakened, ratcheting down concerns about the potential for damage to oil and natural-gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude for October delivery was last down $1.46, or 2%, at $71.05 a barrel in electronic trading. "Not only has Tropical Storm Ernesto weakened, but also it will likely miss Gulf of Mexico oil refineries," said economists at Action Economics. The National Hurricane Center said Ernesto generated hurricane-force winds Sunday morning, but it was...

Enron and Today's Oil and Gas Prices August 9th, 2006 If a Senate study concluded that legislation signed by George W. Bush and supported by Halliburton was partially responsible for todayÂ’s high oil and gas prices, do you think you would have heard about it?Well, such a report was released by the Senate. However, the president that signed the law in question was William Jefferson Clinton, and the company that strongly lobbied for its passage was Enron. Yet, mysteriously, this study was almost completely ignored.On June 26, Senators Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan) released a comprehensive report detailing...

Oil prices climbed nearly $2 and closed in on $72 a barrel Tuesday as speculators returned to the market with a fresh infusion of cash. A rally in petroleum products futures along with concerns about the coming hurricane season prompted traders to cover recently sold positions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that there was an 80% chance that the Atlantic hurricane season beginning June 1 would be "above normal," with eight to 10 hurricanes and four to six severe hurricanes seen on the horizon. While other forecasters have made similar predictions all year, the hurricane outlook was...

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) - Most motorists are feeling the pain as gasoline creeps toward, or over, $3 a gallon - but not Art Altrichter. "This feels pretty good!" Altrichter said as he filled the tank of his Ford F-150 pickup for $2.03 a gallon on Thursday, when the average here was $2.73. "Right now, to be a few pennies over $2, when it's as high as it is? That's a real deal." A year ago, the retired milk truck driver bought 500 gallons of gas at First Fuel Banks, locking it in at the then-current price of $2.03 a...