I wrote that reason because of all the Freepers here like “Curiosity” who swore up and down there couldn’t possibly be oil speculation and kept screaming “where is the excess inventory. You can’t have speculation without a buildup of inventory.” No matter what I said, they wouldn’t listen. Now they are proved wrong, and where are they? Hiding in their hidey-holes so they don’t have to eat crow, that’s where.
Do you agree with my point about speculators in aggregate? To be sure, in small markets it's possible for speculators to manipulate the market at the expense of producers and consumers, but I would expect the oil market to be much too large for that to be very effective.
Incidentally, I wish the point about speculators' aggregate profits would be articulated clearly to people who are thinking of getting in the game. The unwise speculators are very bad for the markets; assuming they're using their own money, they hurt themselves as badly as they hurt anyone else, so I don't want to demonize them, but nonetheless both they and the markets would be better off if they stayed out.