[RSmithOpt]

I understand your posts and thank you for the time to go into detail....what is amazing to me is the speed and accuracies of the retail increase versus what is suppose to 30+ days 'futures'. I'm am not against profits in the oil/gas game.... I just 'see' a well groomed price manipulation encompassing more than the futures market.

You don't think that a couple billion of Big Oil's recent record profits aren't redirected quarterly to off shore hedge funds that inject money in the 'future' commodity they produce?

Since a fund like that is 'manged' offshore and not held to US laws, seems like a nice setup in assuring record profit achievements.

[RSmithOpt]

Just tossed the idea out for discussion and getting some more knowledge as well and well supported opinions.

Thanks.

[mnehring]

.what is amazing to me is the speed and accuracies of the retail increase versus what is suppose to 30+ days 'futures'.

It is because they are buying their product on a daily basis. They can't hope that one or two day downward trends will be a part of a long term trend. When you look at long term trend prices, even with all of the short term drops, the long term trend is always upward. This chart is from 98-03 but it is a pretty decent reflection of how the trend relates.

[mnehring]

You don't think that a couple billion of Big Oil's recent record profits aren't redirected quarterly to off shore hedge funds that inject money in the 'future' commodity they produce?

No, as a rabid investor, I pour over their annual reports. One thing that is consistent is that the majority of those 'billion dollar profits' don't come from domestic downstream supply (ie, oil that goes to US gas production). Most of the profit comes from wholesaling that oil to Europe (lower dollar allows this) or selling the oil to petrochemical companies that turn it into plastics or other chemicals. The profit from domestic downstream is pretty much flat. The big bucks are in upstream wholesale reselling and downstream produits blancs.