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For the record, I'll repeat my position that this is not a bubble, and that large volatility (in both directions) is a logical consequence of having marginal pricing driven by the marginal price of demand destruction rather than the marginal cost od production.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Sep 4th, 2008 at 09:02:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I guess it comes down to how you define a "bubble": your "large volatility" is my "bubble".

Less than seventy 600,000 barrel cargoes per month of Brent/BFOE (the price of which sets the market) have a market value between $4bn and $6bn in the recent "large volatility".

This is dwarfed by the money - most of it leverage - swilling around the market.

I have a lot of sympathy with your argument - which is essentially saying that we are seeing swings between a "seller's market" and a "buyer's market".

It's the wildness of the swing, and how we may characterise this, which is the issue.

IMHO "bubbles" are everywhere and always caused by leverage, and that's what we've seen here.

Moreover, I think we will see such "large volatilities" again and again until the market experiences a "meltdown" taking the single points of failure aka energy clearing houses with them.

This insanely leveraged market - run by intermediaries for intermediaries - can only have one outcome.

It's going to fuck itself, and sooner, rather than later.

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Thu Sep 4th, 2008 at 03:28:52 PM EST
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