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NEW YORK (Fortune) -- With oil now at $50 a barrel, you no longer hear Congress complaining about oil speculators. The irony (something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning,intended meaning讽刺的事) is there's probably more real speculation going on today than there ever was back in June and July. I'm talking about the type of speculation that involves hoarding oil today so it can be sold for more（卖更多或更高） down the road（美口语，一段时间后，今后，在将来）. Today's speculators are actually buying oil. They're not merely flipping （move or act on with a quick motion ） futures contracts without taking delivery （提货）- which is what hedge funds and commodities index funds were doing when they were in the crosshairs of Congress this summer. As I've argued before, investors who trade futures but never take delivery of actual oil can't have a material impact on （重大影响）oil prices because their trading affects neither supply nor demand. What's different now is the structure of the futures market, which is giving big investors an incentive to buy and hold huge sums of crude. Specifically, the November 2009 price of oil is considerably higher ($12 a barrel higher, to be precise) than the spot price（现货价格） - a scenario （况景，情景：如：scenario planning/analysis情境规划/分析）futures traders call a "contango" market.(contango: Stock Exchange： The premium or interest paid by the buyer to the seller, to be allowed to defer paying for the stock purchased until the next fortnightly settlement day.延期费,期货溢价) (The opposite scenario - spot prices higher than futures prices - is known as "backwardation.")(Stock Exchange ：The seller's postponement of delivery of stock or shares, with the consent of the buyer, upon payment of a premium to the latter; -- also, the premium so paid现货溢价) "The steepening of the contango has opened up carry-trade arbitrage opportunities that are slow to be closed due to constrained credit conditions," Goldman Sachs(高盛) wrote in a recent research report. Translation: this is a great time for investors to be hoarding oil. Today's market is giving Goldman clients and other well-heeled investors （wealthy）an opportunity to buy oil in the spot market for $50 a barrel, sell it forward in the futures market for $62, and then pocket (装入口袋) the $12-a-barrel difference, less storage costs. This type of oil investing was quite popular in 2005 and 2006 when, like today, the price of oil one year out was much higher than the spot price. Back then, contango trades were so popular that one of Morgan Stanley's （摩根斯坦利）top energy traders, Olav Refvik, leased so much oil storage that he earned the nickname "the King of New York Harbor." There's no question the investing strategies pursued by Refvik and others were pushing up oil prices. By putting large sums of oil into storage, they reduced the supply available to consumers. By 2007, however, the gap between spot prices and futures vanished, and so did the opportunity to profit from that difference. And the amount of oil held in inventory began to fall. Nevertheless, Congress needed a scapegoat （替罪羊）for rising oil prices and an easy target proved to be hedge funds （对冲基金）and other investors dabbling in oil futures. (dabble这里是不及物动词表示：undertake something superficially or without serious intent。原意及物动词表示嬉水：轻柔嬉耍地泼溅液体splash water gently and playfully,/To splash or spatter with or as if with a liquid: “The moon hung over the harbor dabbling the waves with gold”) But these pseudo-speculators were simply making a bet on （打/下赌注）the direction of prices; they weren't driving them. Their gains (or losses) came out of the hides of the investors or airlines or oil companies on the other sides of their trades, not the oil-consuming public. Moreover, a lot of commodities hedge funds were actually making the wrong bets: According to （美林）Merrill Lynch, the average commodities hedge fund had a negative trailing （A term used to describe the most recent time period.）12-month return （一年期收益）through June. 备注：Most often you will hear the term "trailing 12 months", and, from time to time, "trailing three months" or "trailing six months". The term may also modify a reported metric. For example, the earnings in a trailing price-to-earnings ratio refers to the past earnings per share over a certain period - usually 12 months. Trailing 12 months is denoted by the acronym "TTM". Unlike futures flippers,（flip:Purchase and immediate resale of property (within hours or days) at a quick profit. A point when traders shift from having more long positions to having more short positions) contango traders really do impact oil prices, yet they're getting a free pass（豁免其责）. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, domestic oil inventories have risen 9% since oil prices peaked in early July. While some of that is attributable to （归因于）the weak economy and slack energy demand, gasoline consumption declined only 5% over the same period and gasoline inventories have risen only 4%. (If you're wondering why contango traders would target crude oil but not gasoline, vaporization issues make gasoline harder to store.) 备注：（flip)This can be a very effective tool for determining the trend of a certain currency. A shift from long to short positions indicates that the market's bullish outlook 牛市行情 on a specific currency could be coming to an end. Demand for oil storage is so keen today that some big investors who can't secure storage on land have resorted to leasing supertankers and using them as floating oil tanks. For example, the U.S. oil trading firm Koch Supply & Trading recently leased the 2-million-barrel-capacity Dubai Titan, a Koch spokesperson confirms, the third supertanker Koch has leased this year. It's hard to quantify （定量/量化）exactly much lower gas prices might be were it not for the current speculation. In the United States alone, crude oil inventories have increased by 27 million barrels since early July, the equivalent of about 200,000 barrels a day being pulled off the market. Based on the estimates I've seen, a 200,000 barrel-a-day decrease in supply could raise gasoline prices by anywhere (get anywhere小有成就) from 20 to 40 cents a gallon. For the average consumer, that's real money. But I bet you a barrel or two that actual oil investors like Koch never get targeted by Congress the same way the hedge funds and index funds did this past summer. After all, who needs a scapegoat when gas is $1.90 a gallon?
From: http://edition./ |
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