Crude Oil Update

Contrary to what many believe, speculators can drive prices in the commodities (and more generally futures markets). This is exactly what is happening with oil, which is experiencing the biggest speculative boom since the COT report from the CTFC has begun.

ZeroHedge has published a nice chart showing the price of oil and the number of speculative positions on the WTI futures contract:

As you can see on the above chart, the number of long speculative positions has doubled in the past several months alone and yet, the price of oil has merely jumped 15-20%.

This also confirms that there's no production or delivery concerns, and that oil producers are selling their production against these long speculative positions, which will have to either roll over from contract to contract, or be closed by selling them.

Carl Futia, who I do not often agree with, has published a nice post about oil making the cover of the Economist (which is one the of best contrarian indicators you can find!) and other magazines and newspapers. He concludes that the next big swing in crude oil prices will be downward. I couldn't agree more with this forecast.