2008-07-28silverseek.com

In terms of dollar amounts, it appears that SemGroup held short positions on more than $15 billion worth of crude oil and perhaps much more. In practical terms, it would take a position of that size going against you in order to generate a loss of $3 billion. You should be asking yourself, how did the NYMEX and the CFTC allow SemGroup, or anyone, to amass such a large position that it, obviously, couldn’t stand behind? What do these regulators do all day?

The answer, of course, is that they encourage short-side concentration when it suits them. Further:

But, if there was a speculative premium to the price of oil, I contend that premium was created more by the speculative shorts buying back those short positions, rather than the speculative longs buying and adding to their longs. After all, the public data clearly indicates that open interest in crude oil futures has been declining over the past six moths, indicating that contracts have been liquidated on balance. That means that the longs have been selling and the shorts have been buying. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the buying pressure has been coming from the shorts, and even our elected officials should be able to figure this out.



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