In any case, I find 81% as the percentage offinancial investors to be extraordinarily low - usually the paper trade outnumbers the physical trade by more than 5 to 1. This shows that this is a market where physical players still play a major role.

Anyway, doesn't change a thing about my point on the high sensitivity of the market to any news - because what's at stake is not the marginal cost of producing a barrel, it's the marginal cost of demand destruction. and that's a highly elastic number.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes