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SOMEONE slipped this little bomb wrapped up like a present under your Christmas tree: Starting next month, the New York Mercantile Exchange is going to let average investors speculate on the price of oil and gasoline.... ...The wire service Bloomberg reported right before the holiday that Nymex will begin trading in a weighted energy index "designed to attract small investors." Well, lucky for us! As anybody with a car knows, the price of fuel has dropped about 25 percent from its peak. That's where the Nymex's little bomb in a box comes in. After having lost a bundle when energy...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- November crude dropped 93 cents to close at $57.59 a barrel Wednesday, marking the contract's weakest closing level since June 2005 as traders eyed the latest news from key oil producers and awaited Thursday's data on U.S. petroleum supplies. November unleaded gasoline fell 1.65 cents to close at $1.4503 a gallon and November heating oil closed at $1.672 a gallon, down 0.89 cent. November natural gas fell 31.6 cents, or 4.9%, to end at $6.15 per million British thermal units

Intel Terascale Brings 80 Cores To Your DesktopIf you were impressed with dual core technology and quad core processors seem a bit like overkill, how about Terascale processing with 80 cores? Sound far fetched? Intel doesn’t think so. Head on over to PCPerspective for the rest of the article. For our discussions here, the term “terascale” will refer to a processor with 32 or more cores. Moving away from the “large” cores seen in the Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 lines from Intel and AMD, the cores in a terascale processor will be much simpler (kind of like we...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil jumped 3 percent to over $63 a barrel on Wednesday as expectations that producing cartel OPEC may slash output to defend prices countered rising U.S. inventories. U.S. crude rose $2.03 to $63.04 a barrel by 1853 GMT, surging back from a low of $60.10 hit after data showing large builds in U.S. gasoline and distillates stocks. London Brent gained $2.24 to trade at $62.36 a barrel. Oil in New York has fallen from a peak of $78.40 in July because of rising U.S. fuel stocks, easing economic growth and diminishing political tensions over Iran's nuclear...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices fell to a new six-month low below $60 a barrel on Monday as news of BP restoring output at Prudhoe Bay added to a sense of healthy global supplies. U.S. light, sweet crude for November fell 56 cents to $59.99 a barrel in Globex electronic trading. By 0108 GMT it stood 61 cents lower at $59.94 a barrel, deepening a seven-week rout that has knocked more than $17 a barrel off prices. Prices fell below the previous $60.00 a barrel low posted on September 20. Previous frontmonth October was reported last week to have fallen...

Commercial property contracts based on indexes; 10 planned The Chicago Mercantile Exchange said Wednesday that it will offer futures and options on commercial real estate, allowing investors to bet on swings in the value of the $5.3 trillion U.S. market. The contracts, based on indexes developed by San Francisco-based Global Real Analytics LLC, will begin trading in the first quarter of 2007, the Merc said. The exchange will list 10 cash-settled contracts: a composite index, five regional indexes and contracts based on retail, office, apartments and warehouse properties. "There's quite a bit of risk out there," said Felix Carabello, the...

LONDON (Reuters) -- Oil prices tumbled more than a dollar Wednesday, falling below $68 a barrel and breaking a key support level. U.S. light crude for October delivery fell $1.15 to $67.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For U.S. crude, the 200-day moving average, considered a funds buy/sell trigger, was effective around $67.50. Prices have fallen by more than $11 from a record of $78.65 hit on Aug. 8 when concerns of supply disruption ran high. Since then, diplomatic efforts to try to resolve Iran's dispute with the West have eased worries of possible disruption of the...

EW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures tumbled early Monday as traders moved to unwind the hurricane premium built into prices late last week as Tropical Storm Ernesto weakened, ratcheting down concerns about the potential for damage to oil and natural-gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Crude for October delivery was last down $1.46, or 2%, at $71.05 a barrel in electronic trading. "Not only has Tropical Storm Ernesto weakened, but also it will likely miss Gulf of Mexico oil refineries," said economists at Action Economics. The National Hurricane Center said Ernesto generated hurricane-force winds Sunday morning, but it was...

Enron and Today's Oil and Gas Prices August 9th, 2006 If a Senate study concluded that legislation signed by George W. Bush and supported by Halliburton was partially responsible for todayÂ’s high oil and gas prices, do you think you would have heard about it?Well, such a report was released by the Senate. However, the president that signed the law in question was William Jefferson Clinton, and the company that strongly lobbied for its passage was Enron. Yet, mysteriously, this study was almost completely ignored.On June 26, Senators Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan) released a comprehensive report detailing...

Oil prices climbed nearly $2 and closed in on $72 a barrel Tuesday as speculators returned to the market with a fresh infusion of cash. A rally in petroleum products futures along with concerns about the coming hurricane season prompted traders to cover recently sold positions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that there was an 80% chance that the Atlantic hurricane season beginning June 1 would be "above normal," with eight to 10 hurricanes and four to six severe hurricanes seen on the horizon. While other forecasters have made similar predictions all year, the hurricane outlook was...

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) - Most motorists are feeling the pain as gasoline creeps toward, or over, $3 a gallon - but not Art Altrichter. "This feels pretty good!" Altrichter said as he filled the tank of his Ford F-150 pickup for $2.03 a gallon on Thursday, when the average here was $2.73. "Right now, to be a few pennies over $2, when it's as high as it is? That's a real deal." A year ago, the retired milk truck driver bought 500 gallons of gas at First Fuel Banks, locking it in at the then-current price of $2.03 a...

Crude oil and gasoline futures felltoday after President Bush gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to relax regional clean-fuel standards to attract more imports of gasoline to the United States and to make it easier for supplies to be moved from one state to another. President Bush also said he would halt deposits of oil to the nation's strategic petroleum reserve until the fall, but analysts said that measure would have next to no impact on crude prices and certainly would not help make gasoline any cheaper. Even the fuel-specification waivers will have a marginal impact, analysts said, given...

LONDON - Oil hit a record $74 a barrel Wednesday on fears Iran's intensifying dispute with the West may hit oil supplies and after U.S. gasoline stocks dropped. London's Brent crude settled $1.22 higher at $73.73 a barrel after peaking at a record $74. U.S. gasoline stocks slumped more than 5 million barrels last week, government data released Wednesday showed. It was a larger fall than analysts polled by Reuters expected, and supplies are now nearly 5 percent below last year's level. "The EIA (inventory) data are bullish in light of expectations," said Kyle Cooper, analyst at IAF Advisors in...

Dubai Mercantile Exchange Oman has agreed to supply crude oil to back the planned launch of the Middle East’s first oil futures contract. The government of Oman is working with the new Dubai Mercantile Exchange to launch the crude futures contract this year as oil prices in other markets stand near record levels. The decision by Oman, one of the few Middle East producers not in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is a significant step forward for the DME, as it gives potential users of its crude oil contract the option to take physical delivery or settle financially....

New way to bet on real estate New financial instruments are being launched to let you wager on the direction of home prices in major cities. By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer March 22, 2006: 12:00 PM EST NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - There's finally going to be a viable way to cash in on the housing price boom -- or to guard against its decline -- without going through the messy business of actually buying and selling properties. On Tuesday, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Tradition Financial Services, together with Fiserv Case Shiller Weiss and Standard & Poor's, announced the...

WASHINGTON - Natural gas futures fell sharply for the third straight day on Thursday after the U.S. government said inventories rose last week, a reflection of the recent mild weather but still a surprise to the market. The price of crude, heating oil and gasoline also declined, reversing a recent upward trend in the petroleum complex. Among the flurry of data released by the Energy Department was a detail that highlighted one impact of soaring energy prices in 2005: for the first time since 2001, total demand for petroleum and related products declined from the previous year. Energy demand is...

NEW YORK (AP) - Predictions for mild weather across the Northeast sent crude futures sliding below $57 US a barrel Monday as the warmer-than-usual climate quelled worries about greater fuel demand this winter. Light, sweet crude for January delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange dropped $1.86 to $56.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, January Brent crude also fell 64 cents to $54.37 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange. Monday's decline follows an upswing in oil and gas prices last week as meteorologists tracked a winter storm that was expected to dump rain and...

NEW YORK, NOV 17: Oil prices fell to a 5-month low on Thursday as robust fuel stockpiles in the United States eased fears of a winter supply crunch, despite forecasts for a frosty heating season to come. "The feeling is that supplies are adequate and there is enough room for U.S. refiners to boost production by a large margin when needed," said Joe Arsenio of Arsenio Capital Management. U.S. crude settled down $1.54 to $56.34 a barrel -- the lowest settlement since June 15 -- while London Brent crude fell $1.15 cents to $54.85. Commercial crude oil stockpiles in the...

LONDON -- World oil prices fell further on Friday, with New York's main contract plunging to the lowest point in almost four months, owing to mild temperatures in the United States, where crude inventories are recovering also after recent hurricanes. New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in December, fell 40 cents to 57.40 dollars per barrel in pit deals. Earlier on Friday it had hit 56.93 dollars, its lowest point since July 21. In London, the price of Brent North Sea crude for December delivery shed 81 cents to 54.87 dollars per barrel in electronic dealing. "Warm...

Refco, one of the largest futures trading firms in the world has declared bankruptcy and its chairman is being charged with a number of felonies. The following paragraph from a Washington Post article might jog the memories of some of us older timers. A close examination of her individual trades underscores Blair's pivotal role. It also shows that Robert L. "Red" Bone, who ran the Springdale, Ark., office of Ray E. Friedman and Co. (Refco), allowed Clinton to initiate and maintain many trading positions – besides the first – when she did not have enough money in her account to...

November frozen orange juice futures were trading up 4.60 cents to $1.135 a pound early Wednesday, and touched a contract high of $1.145 a pound, on concerns that Hurricane Wilma may damage orange crops in the state of Florida. Weather forecasters upgraded the storm to Category 5 early today and said it may be the strongest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. Wilma is tracking to the west-northwest but forecasters expect it to dogleg to the northeast and bear down on Florida at the weekend.

NEW YORK: Oil prices fell Tuesday for the third straight session amid signs of weakening demand and the prospect President George W. Bush's administration will tap the nation's heating oil emergency reserve. U.S. oil consumption has weakened significantly in recent weeks amid high pump prices produced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in late August, with many drivers switching to mass transit among taking other measures. "The demand losses that have happened vastly exceed the seasonal decline," said Kyle Cooper, an analyst with Citigroup in Houston. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude for November ended $1.57 lower at $63.90...

Opec President Shaikh Ahmad Al Fahd Al Sabah said yesterday he will propose the cartel raise its output by 500,000 barrels per day when the group meets in September in an attempt to help cool oil prices at record highs. Shaikh Ahmad, also Kuwaiti oil minister, said he will also propose a 500,000 bpd increase in the group's official output ceiling at the September 19th meeting. "We hope that the resolution to the board to increase production and the ceiling, 500,000 (bpd) and 500,000 (bpd), and to refresh the dialogue with all the main consumers, I hope this will...

US crude oil prices surged to a new record high of above 70 US dollars a barrel in opening trade on Monday amid concerns about supply shortages caused by coming Hurricane Katrina. Oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange soared to 70.8 dollars a barrel, beating the previous record of 68 dollars set last week, after producers and refiners shut down operations ahead of the Category 5 hurricane. Katrina, measured as one of the four strongest storms on record, was expected to hit land at sunrise on Monday. Seven southeast Louisiana refineries with a combined daily capacity of...

Crude oil futures hit more record highs Monday, nearing US$64 a barrel, reflecting market fears over the U.S. embassy closure in Saudi Arabia and concerns that shutdowns of U.S. oil refineries would reduce supply. Light, sweet crude for September delivery rose to a high of US$63.95 on the New York Mercantile Exchange before falling back a bit to US$63.75, up US$1.44 at midday. Prices had settled at US$62.31 a barrel on Friday, a record close for crude since Nymex trading began in 1983. "The market clearly has the jitters," said Deborah White, energy analyst at SG Securities in Paris....

NEW YORK - Crude oil futures topped $55 US a barrel Monday afternoon, as concerns about tight American refined-product inventories held their grip on the market. "The market's continuing to climb on all the same supply worries," said Tom Bentz, a broker in New York for French bank BNP Paribas. Fears of ever-tighter global supplies, especially distillate stockpiles, were exacerbated Monday by comments from Saudi Arabia's oil minister, who said a lack of refining capacity worldwide lay behind concerns about distillate inventories. More recently, Algerian Oil Minister Chakib Khelil said he would support a decision by the Organization of...

Saudi Arabia has plenty of oil -- more than the world is likely to need - along with an increasing ability to refine crude oil into gasoline and other products before selling it overseas, a top Saudi official says. "The world is more likely to run out of uses for oil than Saudi Arabia is going to run out of oil," Adel al-Jubeir, top foreign policy adviser for Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah, said Wednesday. In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Al-Jubeir said relations between his nation and the Bush administration were strong but "the...

NEW YORK — Orange juice futures uncorked a sizzling rally Thursday to end up and near a 2-1/4-year high on all-around buying after a surprisingly huge cut in USDA's projection of the hurricane-hit Florida citrus crop, dealers said. The New York Board of Trade's key May juice contract shot up 7.65 cents or 8.18 percent to settle at 101.20 cents a lb, ranging from 98.50 to 101.85 cents. It was the loftiest close for a benchmark contract since juice futures finished at 102.05 cents on November 27th, 2002. July juice shot up its 5.00-cent limit to 99.80 cents. The rally...

Looks like my initial hunch was correct. The assassination of Baghdad governor Ali al-Haidari on January 4th shocked the Iraq elections futures on Tradesports. I did a little bottom fishing at 81. The price has since rebounded to about 89. There are still about 20 days to go until the election, so maybe some more opportunities will come up.

Big move up for Bush; hit 60% just moments ago, from the low 20's when the 'exit poll scare' first hit

The stakes may be high for both presidential candidates in a neck-to-neck race according to recent polls, but it may be even higher for those who are trading shares on them. For years, politicians, voters and the average person in the United States have relied on polls to determine whom the lead contender of any presidential or general election race might be. But it appears with electronic gambling Web sites like Tradesports.com, and future market predictors like Iowa Electronic Futures Market, the clearest indicator of who this year's presidential winner will be is the candidate with the highest market share.......

Tradesports.com Bush Election Futures: Bid: 54 Ask: 54.9 IEM Winner Takes All Bush two-party vote market (combined): Bid: 57.5 Ask: 58.9

There is now no question whatsoever that the Bush re-election futures contract at Tradesports.com is being manipulated. Yesterday the price of the futures were sold down from about 55 (indicating the market's estimate of a 55% probability of Bush's re-election) to 10 (indicating on a 10% probability) with a single 10,000-lot order entered by a single trader. An order that size represents twice the normal volume of an entire typical day's trading. Within moments after the order was completed, the price recovered back to the low-mid-50's. According to sources at Tradesports, yesterday's order was entered by the same individual who...

Click on the daily tab on the graph. 10,000 shares sold of bush futures drove the price to zero for a few minutes.

Current PRESIDENT.GWBUSH2004 spread: 1000 contracts BID at 58.0 No ASK has more than 64 contracts up to the 61.0 price

Bush election futures down 2 to 3 points from recent highs. (See daily graph, selloff started approximately when jobs report released.)

5:27pm 09/27/04 NY crude futures hit $50 in evening trading By Myra P. Saefong SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Crude futures hit $50 a barrel in evening trading Monday, continuing higher after the regular session's advance. November crude was last at $49.98 a barrel, up 34 cents after closing at $49.64 during the regular session on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

It's Bush in the 'Futures' And as an investor, George Soros is betting Democratic presidential contender John Kerry will win, but that puts him in the minority of his peers. Bloomberg News is reporting that most futures markets bettors believe President Bush will retain his office in November, and by an ever-widening margin: • The Dublin-based Intrade Exchange Internet yesterday put Bush ahead of Kerry with 69 percent, up from 49 percent Aug. 13; • The Iowa Electronic Markets, a nonprofit political betting system run by the University of Iowa, gave Bush a 60 percent likelihood of victory, up from...

Taking a look at the futures market at tradesports.com, it appears that Nevada, Florida, Ohio, West Virginia and Missouri are now solid Bush. The states currently in play are Pennsylvania, Oregon, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Iowa. I say GWB needs to adjust his strategy, take a strong defensive posture in NV, FL, OH, WV and MO and make an all out offensive assault on PA, OR, NM, NH, MN and IA. http://tradesports.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/ Kerry is dizzy and stumbling. Time to deliver the knockout punch.

PRESIDENT.GWBUSH2004 PRESIDENT.KERRY2004 Politics US Presidential Elec Presidential Election Winner 2004 Statistics Currency USD Session lo/hi 66.8 - 70.0 Life lo/hi 49.0 - 75.0 Previous Close 63.5 Open Price 67.0 Last Price 70.0 (********) Last Trade Time 03:30 PM, BST Today's Volume 3189 Total Volume 513858

After trading in a narrow range (save for a brief hiccup) from 61 - 64 for over a week, GWB just rocketed above 67.0 in this futures market. There is high trading volume, and this looks like a major move. Dubya hasn't been this high since the beginning of the year. Could it be the NJ poll results?

Just took a look at the TradeSports online futures trading for President Bush's reelection. The President's prospects took a sharp jump upward this week, as you can see in the diagram below. (Click here to go to the TradeSports page to see the full details.) For those who don't know how this works, if Bush wins, a trader will get one dollar for every future s/he purchases. The more that traders are willing to pay for a future, the more that indicates the anticipation that Bush will win. Bush has gone from about 50 cents to over 58 cents just...

Stock Futures Point to Higher Opening 17 minutes ago By Nick Olivari NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock futures pointed to a higher market open on Monday after the earlier-than-expected transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to an interim government. The news that the United States handed over sovereignty two days ahead of expectations formally ended the 14-month occupation and overshadowed expectations for a rate hike by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. Watson Pharmaceuticals (NYSE:WPI - news) fell before the opening bell after it forecast lower-than-anticipated results. Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) may gain after the European Commission (news - web sites)...

President Bush's job-approval rating is close to low ebb, if you buy into what the major polling organizations are saying. With even the most optimistic numbers barely reaching 50 percent, and falling as low as 42, the chances of Bush serving a second term seem to shrink with every passing day. But polls aren't infallible. As we have learned, many polls — most notably from the Los Angeles Times — have heavily overweighted Democrats and underweighted Republicans. The Washington Post poll of 1,201 adults contained only 1,050 registered voters, and the remaining 20 percent who are ineligible to vote...

why now?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private investment firm Thomas H. Lee Partners is expected to announce on Monday a deal to buy a majority stake in Refco Group, the world's largest independent retail futures brokerage, for about $2.5 billion, sources close to the situation said. T.H. Lee's investment would give the New York-based brokerage more liquidity and possibly set it up to enhance its value through a public offering at some point in the future, analysts have said. Refco, which has operations in 14 countries and $20 billion in assets, has expanded and diversified through acquisitions like its purchase of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil futures closed below the key $40-a-barrel threshold on Friday after Saudi Arabia proposed raising OPEC output quotas by more than 2 million barrels per day and said it was committed to boosting supplies in June in a bid to cool markets. The Saudi statement, which one analyst called a "shock treatment" for runaway oil prices, came on the eve of a conference in Amsterdam between oil producers and consumer nations, who want to convince OPEC nations to open their taps. Crude prices have risen almost 30 percent since the start of the year, while gasoline...

TerrorBet Terror Futures Exchange Re-Opens for Pre-Registration TerrorBet the world's first trading exchange to offer contracts on civil unrest events today reopened for preregistration following its presentation to the European Commission in Brussels. Brussels, Belgium (PRWEB) April 6, 2004 -- TerrorBet the world's first trading exchange to offer contracts on civil unrest events today re-opened for preregistration following its presentation to the European Commission in Brussels. Aiming to become one of the core innovation projects as part of the European Commission's Preparatory Action on the enhancement of security research, Terrorbet was invited to present the project to over 400...

One can only speculate, of course, about the outcome of the Enron debacle if investors and regulators had been clued by whistle-blowers into the enormity of the corporation's accounting shenanigans in the years before its implosion. Though it's too late for Enron employees and stockholders, thousands of investors believe a similar implosion is looming in the silver market with potentially catastrophic consequences. Rather than sit back and reap the financial benefits to be gained by what these investors believe will be a much higher price for the precious metal, this indignant army of investors and whistle-blowers has set out to...

Natural-gas futures up 29% for '03 Crude up 4% for the year; cattle down 20% in 5 sessions By Myra P. Saefong, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 3:53 PM ET Dec. 31, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Even after suffering a drop of as much as 18 percent in the last three weeks, natural-gas futures ended the year with a 29 percent gain. CBS MARKETWATCH TOP NEWS Rambus ends higher again; chip index up 76% for '03 For fund investors, a memorable year ADRs end best year since 1999, up 33% U.S. stocks end 2003 with first gain in four years Cattle...