And do they outweigh the burden placed on the economy from record high oil prices?
I’m not in the field, but based on my research I’ve come to the conclusion, that record high oil prices are the result of market speculation. Sure demand has its part, but speculation is over inflating the real value of oil and negatively impacting the economy beyond any benefit I can imagine from allowing liquidity in margin trading. So to reassert my question:
Would requiring oil traders to actually take delivery of oil and thereby reducing liquidity in oil trading benefit the economy by quickly reducing oil prices worldwide or harm the economy in the long run?
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I think its dangerous to go as far as requiring taking delivery. You introduce liquidity problems for people who help make the market for sellers. You want some level of speculative investment, so that sellers have some place to sell at those intervals where demand is fully satisfied. If you close that, then producers will have to finance inventory through debt vs equity and that can be more expensive, adding to total costs.
Simply raising margin requirements would have some significant impact on speculative returns. It seems more a question of fine tuning than a dramatic action.
When we see a large gap in real value and price, I think we could raise the margin requirements and achieve a better result.