I don’t know if you read the whole article, but “unregulated, unsupervised” is what I got out of the author’s statement: “But what turned a bull market into a bubble was the sudden arrival of large numbers of new investors and an array of new investment vehicles, many of them involving derivative instruments traded outside the confines of regulated markets.”
Can you tell me a better description of the above than “unregulated, unsupervised” if so, I will be happy to use. Also, I am wondering if your extensive experience in the futures market includes the past two years, when all these bubble producing activities were introduced. I admit that I don’t know a lot about this market, but how relevant is your experience of 34 years ago to these new conditions? If you could explain to me more about these new investment vehicles which he mentions in the article, I would love to learn more about them.
FWIW, your first mistake was posting a financial article from the Washington Post analyzing current market conditions. The second mistake, was commenting on said article. Third, a mini-debate with SAJ. Fourth, .....
The author is on the staff of the Washington Compost, and if that's not enough of a clue for you, you have my sympathy. You'll need it.
In the past two years, I've traded actively, as always, attended the usual conferences, screamed at a couple of Congresscritters for being jackasses on a couple of regulatory proposals (geez, they get more and more stupid over time, unfrickinbelieveable!) and developed a website dedicated to historical and seasonal research in futures mkts. Visit Time & Timing for all the historical information about commodities pricing that you care to see in 60 major markets, in US and Europe. Sorry, no Asian mkts, technical problems in including those mkts.
My 'experience' continues right up to the present date, m'friend. We saw this same type of game, on a smaller scale, in 1979-80. Remember Bunker Hunt and his machinations in the silver mkt? Same deal as here and now, but w/o the funky ''products'' invented by slimeballs like Goldman, plus the fact that Bunkie had an ego as big as all outdoors and WANTED publicity (arrogant fool!), whereas the big specs today want to avoid publicity at all costs if possible.
As Mark Twain once quite trenchantly noted, ''History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.''
There have been several very fine articles in the last two weeks on these new index products, one especially good one by a man named Masters, with whom I've a slight acquaintance. Knows his onions, for certain, and has excellent practical suggestions for chasing the overparticipating specs (read: cheating MFs) out of the energy mkts. I don't have a link to it at the moment, but I can surely dig one up over the weekend.