najdorf

The Economy Is So Bad, Even Pawn Shops Are Suffering

In all of this talk about oil market manipulation, people tend to forget that futures transactions are real transactions that have two sides. No one can profit off storing oil unless there is a real buyer who wants to pay a higher price for future oil. There are plenty of rational reasons a buyer might want to do so - expected inflation, expected increase in demand, need to hedge exposure to oil prices in order to reduce cost risk, etc. The oil will eventually be bought by a consumer and used at a price driven primarily by supply and demand - the dickering about what it costs along the way mostly affects market participants.