If you're not expecting delivery, you are a speculator. Do you own a farm, grow corn/wheat/sugar cane/raise hogs/cattle? Do you run a refinery? Do you intend to build a cracking tower to process crude? If not, any purchase of said commodity futures contracts is pure speculation.
There's ~$80-$90 worth of spec in CL right now, everyone that watches the contract knows this. The talking heads in DC are correct that the specs are pushing up the price of oil, but CL is just another proxy for the weak dollar. Ben, if you're listening, give a big middle-finger to everyone. You want to see CL plummet and a lot of traders wet themselves? Raise 1-1.5 at the next meeting. We'll be below $3/gallon 3-6 weeks afterward. Regards,
Well I guess it was only a matter of time before Washington stepped in to "solve" this problem. I'm suprised actually that it took so long for them to start shifting blame onto "speculators". I've been planning for over a year to rearrange my trading format to avoid this eventual regulation, but guess I'd better hurry up. As a sidenote - what a crock, if our protectors in Washington actually believed this nonsense about evil speculators then the first thing they'd do is reinstate the Glass Steagall act which they recently repealed at the request of their banking cronies. That way Goldman Sachs and the rest of the crooks wouldn't be able to bid up the oil contract using money they create from thin air. That would do a lot to stop the "problem" of speculation. But don't expect to hear anything but more shifted blame from our sold out government. "Look folks, an evil speculator, please ignore peak oil and the fact that your Central Bank is destroying the value of the dollar to bail out it's owner banks." The American people really do get what they deserve...