They say ';speculators'; are driving up the price of oil, what & who are the speculators they are talking about?

';They'; don't have a clue. If speculators were to blame, there would be an increase in oil inventories. There isn't; if anything, inventories are somewhat low...They say ';speculators'; are driving up the price of oil, what %26amp; who are the speculators they are talking about?
c'mon! the supply of oil is going down while demand is going up from more and more consumers, especially automobiles in more developing countries, that part IS supply and demand driving prices up.





Meanwhile the dollar continues it's way down to worthless, so equilibrium prices rise also as the dollar goes kaput.





Speculators - there are always many people and many companies who gamble on most anything - they are simply investors big or small playing the stock market. They take their risks and live or die depending on whether they guess right.They say ';speculators'; are driving up the price of oil, what %26amp; who are the speculators they are talking about?
Speculators are people who hedge money, either their own or borrowed, And bet that either oil is going to go up or down in price, they are commodity traders.





Similar to the stock market, if they buy a barrel of oil on the commodity market (no they don't actually receive a barrel of oil!) for let's say 100 and they are in a long position, and the price for a barrel goes up to 110, they have made a 10% profit. Just as if you were to buy Yahoo! stock, and it went up 10% in a day and you were to sell it.





The same can be said for hedging against, or shorting a commodity. In this case they are betting that the price is going to go down, so if they buy a barrel originally for 100 and they are running a short order, and the price dips to 90, they have just made an 11.1% profit if they choose to cover.





In terms of them driving the price up, they are just playing the market. However, some big players if they put in big commodity orders can influence the price as a whole. But we are talking billion dollar transactions, and that might only change the price of oil a couple cents a barrel! So that could explain why it is going up slow and steady, this is however an untested idea and I would take this sentence with a grain of salt.





Summer time is also renowned in America for going on road trips, the markets expect this and gas prices adjust according to the new demand. Compound this with the fact that if you are buying a hot gallon (in hot weather gasoline expands, so what the pump reads as 1 gallon, might only be .9 gallons at base measurement temperature. The gas station pays for exact measurements which are adjusted for temperature; but this is not true at the pump. That's the gas stations skimming those extra pennies on each transaction)





Companies are always coming up with ways to hurt the consumer to profit their share holder's, in order to solve this we must contact our local senate and demand that gasoline be temperature adjusted to make sure we are receiving full gallons.
It's a bullshit excuse. The problem is neither speculators nor supply and demand. the problem is the oil companies run the governments.