Speculation?: Oil investors, who have been blamed for pushing oil to record levels, have caught on to the trend of declining demand, according to one trader.
“Basically, as they [speculators] were the villains of pushing the market to extreme levels very fast… they’re now doing the opposite,” said James Cordier, founder of OptionSellers.com in Tampa, Fla., who referred to himself as a speculator.
In a report released Monday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said that, last week, more investment funds held “short” positions - betting that prices will continue to fall - than those that bet “long” - that prices will keep climbing.
It was the first time that short positions have outweighed long positions since the start of 2007, when oil prices began climbing, according to Nauman Barakat, energy trader at Macquarie Futures USA, in a research note.
Ok, so for months speculators have said they have nothing to do with the price going up, but they’ll gladly accept blame for the price going down.
Yeah, that’s should pretty much end the fucking speculator debate. They are greatly affecting the market. Hopefully the mess they caused is starting to self regulate and the government will still step in with regulation that will prevent this from happening again.
Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter.
Exxon spent $7 billion in the second quarter finding and producing more new oil, up 38% from last year. Still, oil and natural gas production from the company fell 8%. Even excluding special events such as a labor strike in Nigeria and seizure of fields in Venezuela, production slipped 3%.
The industry says it’s investing as much as it can in finding new oil, but is having a hard time given the shortage of workers and equipment in the sector.
Recent efforts by countries such as Russia, Venezuela and Kazakhstan to gain greater control of their own domestic oil resources have also hampered the ability of international oil companies to increase production.
In addition to making hefty profits, Exxon also had a hefty tax bill. Worldwide, the company paid $10.5 billion in income taxes in the second quarter, $9.5 billion in sales taxes, and over $12 billion in what it called “other taxes.”
Also, don’t forget, Exxon cannot control the price of oil any more than a farmer can control the price of corn. They make a product and the market sets the price.
Has nothing to do with oil prices but Exxon reported another record setting profit this quarter bringing in over 11 billion dollars.
Question for discussion…why?
Is this due to inflation and our poor dollar in the global market? Has Exxon just mastered their oil production and are super efficient? Or has they just increased production so much?
