“I’m sure you’re a nice chap, but, sorry, you simply don’t get it.” “Condemn me all you like...”
First of all I fail to see anywhere that I condemned you. You did have some heated exchanges with gipper81 and groanup, but also complemented gipper81 on one of his links.
Second, I am not a ‘nice chap’ I am a 69 year old, widowed, grandmother, who is just getting back into the world after 10 years of caring for dying mother, father, and husband. I am simply trying to learn and understand the world that I have not been able to pay much attention to in the past decade, also learning to use my first computer which I have had for only 2 years. No need to get nasty with either me or happygrl, as we just are trying to make sense of a very complicated set of situations.
Now maybe this is a man/women thing. Perhaps it is normal for men to claw and fight, and make accusations that people are highjacking the thread, and then find something nice to say to each other. This is not a typical woman style of interacting, and while I don’t care for it I will look past it to find the nuggets of useful information amidst the droppings.
I did not say you had condemned me; I stated that I held an unpopular opinion and invited you to condemn me if you wanted to. Please read that mssg again, because this distinction is important.
The single thing that most inhibits understanding of mkts, energy mkts particularly, is the habit/tactic of the so-called media of throwing out innumerable red herrings. This has the effect, among a significant portion of the public at large, of causing (many) people to run off in all directions casting about for ''causes'' of ''problems'', and for assorted villains busy with all sorts of malfeasance.
To understand mkts generally, focus only on sources of supply and/or possible supply, and on sources of demand and/or potential demand. The two questions to ask are always: 'How does Event X influence supply (demand) right now or in the very short term in Market Z?' and 'Will Event X influence supply (demand) in Market Z or a related market over the longer term.''
Naturally, no one gets the answers to such questions correct all the time, or even most of the time. The reason for this is not native stupidity or anything like it: the reasons are twofold. First is the quality of information about Market X, or the lack of information thereon, held by the individual who is trying to answer the question(s). Second is the utter lack of education about economics and the workings of markets, aided and abetted to an appalling degree by the education ''system'' in this nation.
Goobermint's role in this process, aside from sponsoring inferior economic education, is well-known and historically inarguable. The more goobermint interference that there is in a market, other than to protect mkt participants from fraud, the more unstable any mkt becomes.
The ''media'' are no better and in some ways worse. Just at the moment, I'm trying to recall an example of a mass-mkt media article or programme about mkts that A) had its ''facts'' straight, B) had its ''facts'' sufficiently complete enough to be able to address whatever topic the article purported to address, C) was even relatively free of non-market agenda-driven political bias -- to either side of the political spectrum, and D) showed competence in reasoning from A to B to C regarding events affecting Market X.
I can't think of a single instance, not one.
Examples of these flaws abound. Recently, we've had this ''syllogism'' (sic) from the LBM: (premise major)-- oil company executives earn enormous salaries and oil companies are earning enormous profits; (premise minor) -- gasoline prices are high; therefore, oil companies and their executives should be subject to a punitive tax, ''windfall-profits'' and all that.
Well, this is rubbish, of course. The LBM's reasoning is laughably faulty here, but that's not the worst of it by a long chalk. The LBM here deliberately conceal a half dozen vital facts. The most important of these, regarding a discussion about the gasoline market, is that goobermint profit enormously more than oil companies on the sale of a gallon of gasoline. Nowhere is this mentioned by the LBM, yet without doubt this is a very important point in the discussion.
The net of all this is:
1) Accept as contrarian evidence everything that the goobermint say about mkts, with the exception of ''hard'' data (the weekly reports on storage levels of petroleum products and natural gas, for example -- but even these can be and have been spectacularly wrong at times, so be very careful).
2) Ignore almost everything disseminated by the mass-mkt LBM. This includes, specifically, every opinion article on CBNC and FBN, and in WSJ, IBD, The Economist, FT, Barron's and ''business'' publications generally. In the case of print publications, the ''information'' presented is almost always out of date (and, thus, thoroughly useless) by the time you read it, the exception here being broad-based ''trend''-type pieces, which are still subject to objection C) above.
To learn what really happens in mkts, consult:
1) Cash-market brokers. Their very living depends upon their understanding of the markets in which they deal. Now, of course, they won't tell you everything you might want to know, because a lot of what they do know is time-sensitive, proprietary, or both...but they will give you a hell of a lot of very useful information.
2) UNsuccessful traders. There are way more of these than successful traders, and they love to talk...and they are outstandingly valuable contrarian indicators.
3) Industry statisticians. Again, their living depends on their ability to acquire, collate, and understand the pertinent data about markets. Side note: the more limited their scope, the more useful they are -- a person who follows stats and data on, say, corn, is more useful than someone else who follows stats and data on grain markets in broad.
4) Successful traders. The problem here is that most of them are very close-mouthed about their views and doings. Nonetheless, two of the five most instructive conversations I've ever had about markets were with world-class traders.
One last thing. Read. Read those who have proven, by the test of time, that they know and understand the workings of markets. Bastiat, Adam Smith, Ricardo, vonMises, Hayek, Bachelier (if you can find his papers in English or if you read French), Knight, Arrow, Merton (for the most part, but watch out, he's VERY mathematical and difficult for the non-mathematically inclined). For an easy and very enjoyable read, written by an utterly brilliant man, I'd recommend Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics.
Hope this little commentary is of some use to you in gaining a better understanding of mkts and the way they actually work, and FReegards!