Crude Oil falls below $130/barrel
 

Down more than $15 (11%) in the last 3 days. Gas is/was $4.27/gallon here - it would be nice if it dropped 11% to $3.80 (I know - wishful thinking).
Nat gas is down 8% too.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...6484F35944A%7D

Most likely you will never see it below 4 $ again.

surprisingly low here too :)

i should say "low"

Its a welcome drop for those that had the balls to short oil. The consumer may get a bit of relief as well but I wouldn't get to excited yet. It may take some time to show at the pump.

One hurricane threatening the gulf and back up over $150 we go though.

$3.99 here

4.59 here. :)

holy crap, that a bid jump.

ironically, gas went up here from $4.24 to $4.29 for 92

Gas is about $3.94 here in NJ

Bootleggers sell gas for $3.94 in NJ? Oh my God. The world is coming to an end.

its $4.05

At some point within the next 6 months some huge speculative positions will unwind, the price of oil will free-fall, trough out and stabilize at a sensible level - I say $75 - $100 range. Markets have a way of finding equilibrium through volatility.

from your lips to gods ears

$4.54 here today... :Oh crap :helpme

ADG

The sheep are getting fed that we need to drill for oil off the US coast.


Most Americans don't understand the future markets and speculative purchases.

Greed doesn't discriminate and it knows no bounds. The only reason people get frantic about the price of oil is that 99.99% of people and businesses consume it and do not invest in it.

When the real estate market gets irrationally expensive, every get's giddy and greedy, since so many people are real estate investors.

The oil market is irrational right now, but as someone once said, the market can stay irrational far longer than you or I can stay solvent.

$10.55 here today...............

im gonna have to re-mortgage the villa in spain if this continues!

And yet the prices at the pump continue to rise. The fleecing of America continues. Go OPEC!

Hopefully we will continue to see some strength in the stock market to pull some cash out of the oil markets so this freefall continues.

$4.89... and I couldn't give a shit.

If gas price does actually drop sharply, I will honestly be very surprised.

Dracula doesn't have a car ... he has a horse carriage ....

Funny. I went to the gas station the other day. They were changing the prices while I sat at the red light.

To my surprise, all three grades went down about $.08/gallon

Now if Congress could only close the sneaky fucking loopholes in the commodities market (haha right)

I parked my car for the summer in March, talk about getting out at the right time. :) I think I'm saving close to $1,000 a month all things considered

:thumbsup

Yer a pretty fart smucker :2 cents:

good call there :thumbsup

And watch it rise again next year. A dip was predicted and then for it to shoot back up.

It's easy to anchor on recent prices and think they are the norm. For reference.

Oil. Price per barrel
1999 $16.56
2000 $27.39
2001 $23.00
2002 $22.81
2003 $27.69
2004 $37.66
2005 $50.04
2006 $58.30
2007 $64.20

The big question going forward is what is the spare capacity. The truth is no one really knows.

Nice call. Did you short oil and clean up?
I looked at getting into this or the etf these guys have a few months ago but I didn't have the balls to pull the trigger.

Nope, I'm not nearly wealthy or risk-loving enough to play with that kind of leverage and volatility.

The people who trade futures and futures options are rich and nuts. Typically they have 5M - 10M in their account to play with and eat up $500k swings like it's nothing. The index derivatives traders are the craziest - the guys who trade index futures can lose (or make) $500k in 1 minute. It's pure gambling.

I used to work in the financial industry and have some friends who trade commodities and financial derivatives, so I still like to keep up on what's happening. I love charts (japanese candlesticks rule)... I could study anonymous charts all day.. they tell you everything you need to know about any stock/future/option/index/etc (yes I am a proponent of efficient market theory).

Back to oil - the long term trend is up, there is no escaping it. Sudden violent swings up or down are only relevant if your time horizon is short. If you look at any oil chart.. $140 / $150 prices were stupid.. there was no trend to support it. Markets work, traders look at charts and irrationality always unwinds. Timing it is more art (and luck) than science however... people get burned when they get myopic.. when they lose sight of their underlying timeline.

Yeah, I've seen you mention this before. If I hadn't seen you mention it I probably would have guessed you had a background in finance as your posts are usually spot on.

Who were you working with when you were in the industry? I worked at BMO Nesbitt Burns private client group out of First Canadian place for a while. It was something I decided I didn't want to do at that time in my life. I might go back when I'm older although I'm already 35 :helpme . I do miss the people I had the opportunity to meet and the after work parties weren't too bad either. :winkwink:

Seriously? I worked on 47th floor from 2001 - 2002.

Kazaa :1orglaugh or Newlands

Dwight potter, jim lipsett... ring any bells?

Yessir :thumbsup (the best branch parties!!) Were you there during those years?? towards the end of 02 as the market was tanking there were tons of cutbacks and layoffs.. it was not so much fun to be there anymore. Yep all those names are familiar :)

There is one thing about sales I learned from kazaa that I retain - the crazy call.

For those who don't know the "crazy call" it is this:

Let's say you are on the phone with a potential whale, you've spoken a few times.. but the realtionship is pretty undeveloped.. very professional.. not a lot of real chemistry. So, how to overcome this an build a bond? You pretend that something CRAZY happens when you are on the phone. Being in an office building, a seagull hitting the window is good.. or the window washer guy almost falling.. or maybe you see a car accident in the streets below. The point being, you react to this crazniess like "Holy shit a giant bird just smashed into my window??!??!!". The shared experience builds rapport.

Shit I knew I spelled Kaszas name wrong. I always thought of the file sharing program when I heard his name called.

Those were some heady days back when you were there. The drink cart was no more by the time I showed up :(

I make the same mistake too. I wasn't there for the crazy crazy times like 3/4th Q 1999. The tech bubble had unwound by the time I got there.. and then sept 11th.. enron, etc.

But that end of the brokerage business is so cut-throat.. and pretty unethical. I was more interested in the technical aspects of trading, especially derivatives. Funny, my dream job was to be an OTC financial derivatives broker (can you say credit default swap market.. lol)

I worked out of the Kaszas branch on Dwight's team for about a year. I was on course to take over part of his book by now, which is rather large, but he had a falling out with my connection to nesbitt and I got caught in the middle. Moved over to the newlands branch in '04 and worked with a couple younger guys, who had formed a team, cold calling the likes of Onex and pretty much every listed company in the area. I was quite successful at getting us in the door but the guys I worked with weren't closing fast enough for me and I decided to leave. Onex offered up 100,000,000 for BA's in 10,000,000 orders; yeah I know you only earn about .05-.1 but on 100,000,000 . Unfortunatly the desk downstairs could never come up with any paper; go figure. That was our in to get in on any Onex stock purchases. What a gravy train that would have been.

Not sure if Horst Mueller was with Dwight when you were Kaszas branch? Man was a technical genius. I had to put together his reports; I still have some(resource supercycle from '02). This guy called every major stock market move since the 70's and he had his daily morning market updates from his CIBC days to prove it.

Who were you working with, Steve Kaszas?

He ended up losing the branch to Dwight over some improper trades. The mighty Joe Quinn ended up with the office beside Tinsdale.

Mine was a trading desk. I wanted to move the markets :1orglaugh

Yep Horst was there when I was there. I didn't work for Kaszas, I worked as an assistant with a younger guy who was a friend of mine (last name Pakdil) after his former parter left. We were pushing managed money, estate planning, tax strategies and new issues on Trust Units (most units had 5% juice up front with no load to the investor.. these kept the commissions rolling in). We had one guy who was a pretty agressive currency trader, that was fun... at least I got to deal with some of the traders downstairs.. good experience. I actually came up with a marketing plan to offer our services through Funeral homes to generate leads :disgust

My interest in that side of the business waned.. it's pure selling, deal making and hand holding. Being into the technical analysis and trading.. specifically futures. options and futures options.. all my CSI education was to be a derivatives trader.. or at least work with a broker who specialized in commodities and derivatives... but I was too young and didn't stick around long enough to follow through on it.