Lone trader caused 100 dollar price for oil

A lone trader out to win a little fame made the purchase that took oil prices to the historic 100 dollars a barrel level this week but he lost 600 dollars on the deal, analysts said.

The trader has been named by US and British media as Richard Arens who runs a one man oil brokerage, ABS.

"The magic figure was hit apparently on the back of a single trade, rumoured to be a local intent on fame," Sucden analysts wrote in a commentary Thursday on the record breaking deal.

Arens offered 100,000 dollars on the New York market on Wednesday for 1,000 barrels of oil, producing the much talked of 100 dollars per barrel which sparked anguish across the financial markets.

He later sold on the contract for slightly below 100 dollars, taking a 600 dollar loss.

"It was just for the form; he wanted to be the first in the world to buy oil at 100 dollars," said Antoine Heff, an analyst at NewEdge.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080104/ts_alt_afp/commoditiesoilpriceoffbeat&printer=1

Is this what they mean when they say, "More money than sense?"

If nations of OPEC seem so intent on raising oil prices why don't we form a OFEC for countries that export food to these desert dwellers? It seems to me that they need food just as much, if not more, than we need their oil.

From what I understand you can't grow crops in the sand.

Paladin said:

If nations of OPEC seem so intent on raising oil prices why don't we form a OFEC for countries that export food to these desert dwellers? It seems to me that they need food just as much, if not more, than we need their oil.

From what I understand you can't grow crops in the sand.

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Have you ever read Frederick Pohl's 1980 sci-fi novel, JEM? In it, he imagines a near-future world divided into just such blocks: fuel, food and "people" (the latter being the block that provides manual labors to the other two). The alignment makes for strange (to us at the time) allies: the U.S. and Bulgaria (food), Norway and Saudi Arabia (fuel), China and Pakistan (people).

Paladin said:

If nations of OPEC seem so intent on raising oil prices why don't we form a OFEC for countries that export food to these desert dwellers? It seems to me that they need food just as much, if not more, than we need their oil.

From what I understand you can't grow crops in the sand.

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Yes, but the powerful people in some countries don't care how much food all of the people have, so it's not as much of a bargaining chip as one might think.

Texana said:

Yes, but the powerful people in some countries don't care how much food all of the people have, so it's not as much of a bargaining chip as one might think.

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They might care when enough hungry people hunt them down.