Back when the Hunt family tried to corner the silver market, the public knew. But, I don't remember how the info got out.
I'll bet the "information cascade" is being staged by someone/ones that will soon get out of the market and leave the schlubs with worthless futures.
“””guess the ownership of oil futures is not public, but it would be interesting to know who is buying and, more importantly, who is selling. Commodity traders? Hedge Funds? Pension Fund managers?”””
_____________________________________________________________
The dirty secret you are not being told is that government, The Federal Reserve and it’s member banks are pushing up the price of oil. The banks are near insolvency, loaded with worthless toxic paper “derivatives”. They take their worthless paper and turn it into the Fed as collateral for loans at the “begging window” that Bernanke et. al. have set up. They are using that money, obtained with worthless collateral to try and shore up their balance sheets. You will find that bank lending to business and consumers has severely dried up. So instead of lending,they are speculating. Long oil, short the broad markets, the consumer be damned, the top priority is saving the banking system.
In short, the Fed provides the worthless paper money, the banks push markets around to extreme profit for themselves and the numbnuts in Congress make alot of noise, but do nothing, as they know what is happening but they are all bought and paid for anyway.
The whole thing is beginning to spiral out of control, the soon to be “Mother of All Bailouts” is just around the corner, the government bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is coming, it’s a matter of when, not if. I’d say before election time it shall be done, so the criminals in Congress can claim they are saving the system.
But........they will only prolong the inevitable..........greed and dishonesty have killed the Golden Goose. A country that was the richest and most powerful on earth 40 years ago is in it’s death throes. Hey, but we’ve got company.....the Euro countries are going under as well. Life as we have known it here in the USA is changing permanently............and not for the better I fear.
Really it's just a phrase to describe a phenomenon in group decision making. But it cannot be faked, or caused.
No one is cornering the oil market but lots and lots of people know where the money is coming from. All the guys who sell those products to institutions all talk to one another and they talk to their customers. No one is trying to hide where the money is coming from in aggregate but the specifics of any trade are certainly kept secret, as it should be. anyone in the institutional finance business can find out what's going on with a phone call.
And much of it is non traditional energy players who are buying "energy index" products from the large investment banks. That's what's caused the upswing in volatilty.