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To: American in Israel; Attention Surplus Disorder; expat_panama; Toddsterpatriot; Southack; ...
The bottom line is at each month end, someone actually takes delivery of oil thereby setting the price.

It's usually helpful to know what you're talking about before speaking up. This remarkable sentence is flat wrong in two particulars.

1) The NYMEX Light Sweet Crude and ICE Brent contracts expire, by rule, well before 'month-end'. For example, NYMEX' rule for determining the expiration day of a contract is: ''Trading [in a specific month] terminates at the close of business on the third business day prior to the 25th calendar day of the month preceding the delivery month.'' Further, as to actual delivery, NYMEX rule 200.16(A) states that delivery may be made on ANY day during the delivery month.

2) Over 95% of all crude contracts are NOT settled by delivery, but by offset; that is, the owners of contracts sell them back into the mkt and the shorts repo the contracts previously sold. This is easily verified by CFTC figs at cftc.gov or probably also at nymex.com . If need be, you can call Joann Arena in the NYMEX stats dep't for verification. Very nice woman, very helpful.

I didn't bother reading the rest of your post. Any post that starts off in this fashion rates strongly to be not worth the time. Do try to learn something about futures mkts before next expounding on the subject.

80 posted on 06/17/2008 5:35:35 AM PDT by SAJ
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To: SAJ

Are you speaking of an EFS transaction?


81 posted on 06/17/2008 5:51:11 AM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: SAJ
So much data, you miss the fact for the spread sheet. Or the forest for the trees...

The price of oil is set by the buyer not the seller or the speculator.

If all the speculators went away, the price of oil would be set by the buyer still.

In fact, to quote you: "Over 95% of all crude contracts are NOT settled by delivery..."

Indeed, 95% of contracts are canceled before the delivery date, and are sold back into the market before delivery date. Why? Because the bottom line is at each month end, someone actually takes delivery of oil thereby setting the price.

89 posted on 06/17/2008 11:07:43 AM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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