Oil...

With all the financial turmoil in the equity markets, it's been easy to overlook the steady slide downward in crude oil. But it has suffered a dramatic decline.

As oil traded downward, we took some nice profits on the U.S. Oil Fund puts and oil continued to slide south. It's now trading at about $92 a barrel.

When oil was trading at nearly $150 a barrel, I was loudly suggesting -- and scoffed at by many -- that the markets were being completely manipulated and that huge price spike had little to do with supply and demand, which sounded like a wild conspiracy theory to many at the time. This has been proved to be true. Indeed, a number of reports have come out showing that one invisible entity controlled fully 15% of the oil futures on the way up -- and that at one point 85% of the bullish futures bets had nothing to do with structural trades (for example airlines or oil refiners hedging) but were purely speculative in nature by big money firms. I suspect Goldman Sachs -- who was loudly calling for $200 oil at the time -- was complicit in this manipulation.

Now that all the manipulators and speculators have slithered out of these markets, oil futures are moving straight down as they look for some kind of natural support.

Where will oil bottom? How do we make money on this new trend?

Get the answers to these questions and more when you read more.

by The Freshman |  09/18/08  |  Stocks: AIG, DO, NE, RIG,