Did Goldman Goose Oil?

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by makloda, Mar 27, 2009.


  1. And the prudent risk management loop and the "bad if not worse case scenario plan" loop.

    A short position equivalent to 20% of the nation's crude inventories?

    Even assuming that the article excludes SPR bbls - that is a crazy position.

    I think the guy kept fading the rally. Any number of things could have happened and he would have lost his grip.

    Geo-political stuff. Competitive gaming. Uh, maybe BOTH at the same time. I have no opinion on the GS role or non-role in this. But there has to be some commentary on them initiating a position that large relative to their capital.

    So here it is.
     
    #11     Mar 27, 2009
  2. At what date(s) did this company initiate their large short position?
     
    #12     Mar 27, 2009
  3. One of the points that stood out to me, during a reading of Lowenstein's 'When Genius Failed: the Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management," was that when LTCM's leveraged positions started to turn south, they asked for some help from GS.

    GS insisted on seeing their trade position records to help them. One of GS' traders downloaded all of their positions onto his laptop. Almost overnight, most of their (LTCM's) highly leveraged and diversified positions somehow quickly aligned into correlated directions against them(which was extremely improbable), and the rest as we know was history and the fall of academic giants.

    It's been a while since I've read it, but that tidbit seems to stand out as just one of the glaring examples of how well one can trust GS and their motives.
     
    #13     Mar 27, 2009
  4. http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf

    He testified, under oath to Congress, about a subject matter he knew intimately, and was absolutely correct about the intense manipulation taking place.

    But yet, nothing happened to anyone but a tiny, irrelevant fund that the SEC wanted to scapegoat, while the real criminals kept their ill-gotten gains.
     
    #14     Mar 27, 2009
  5. Goldman Sachs needs to be investigated.
     
    #15     Mar 27, 2009
  6. Commodity Index funds are nothing new.

    But the amount of money that has poured into them over the last couple of years is NEW . . . especially given how much PENSION FUND money has been allocated into the commodity markets via the index funds. In fact, the amount of money that went into the Energy Markets in Q-1 of 2008 from pension funds was somewhere around $70 Billion, as I recall.

    The Pension Funds adoption of commodities as an Asset Class in recent years is at the heart of the issue.

    Investment in commodity index funds grew from $13 Billion in 2003 to $260 Billion in 2008. :eek:

    In fact, as Master's pointed out in front of Congress - - - Over a 5 year period China's demand for oil increased by 920 million barrels, over the same period index speculators' demand increased by 848 million barrels!

    Of course, the Enron Loophole, the London/Dubai ICE Loophole, and the Swaps Loophole exacerbated the up move. :D

    And the CFTC exempted Index Speculators (institutions) from all position limits??? Granted Wall Street banks an exemption from speculative position limits when these banks hedged OTC swap transactions?

    And guess who were the TOP swap dealers in the commodities markets?

    Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, HSBC, and Wachovia.

    Screwed again.
    How convenient.
     
    #16     Mar 27, 2009
  7. love it. +1
     
    #17     Mar 27, 2009
  8. You guys are paranoid.

    It's all about peak oil, being green, and the free market.

    There is no manipulation.
     
    #18     Mar 27, 2009

  9. Paranoid? Spoken like a man with nothing to lose!!

    I do agree the market is free & manipulation is not the proper word. Crude spiked because of investment flows; investment money flowed because Israel wants nothing more than to start WWIII by dropping nuclear bunker busters on a nation that hasn't started a war in centuries.

    You take the #2 oil producer offline & yes, everyone & their brother will bid crude.

    :)
     
    #19     Mar 27, 2009
  10. GCSICLRBC, how long have you been an Anti Semite?
     
    #20     Mar 27, 2009