Someone can most definitely correct me if I am wrong…
I keep tabs on oil and wholesale gas prices on oilprice.com, so I can anticipate local price rises (as per an older thread, they all go up simultaneously thanks to a regional chain called Gate, where when they go up everyone else follows suit, but when they go down everyone is all over the map, in ye olde “rocket and feather” pattern).
Seems like prices then depend on these daytraders and their “rationales” for why oil goes up or down on a given day, far more than they do on either local economic conditions or corporate policies. So who is buying these futures, exactly?