Soros: Oil boom increasingly speculative

LONDON - Soaring oil prices are increasingly the result of speculation, financier George Soros said in an interview published Monday.

The billionaire investor said the money pouring into the oil market increasingly had the look of a bubble, but that it would not burst until both the United States and Britain were knocked into a recession.

"Speculation ... is increasingly affecting the price," Soros was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph. "The price has this parabolic shape that is characteristic of bubbles."

But the cost of oil — which briefly reached new record highs of more than $135 a barrel in trading Thursday — was unlikely to fall dramatically until the U.S. and Britain economies began contracting, the paper quoted Soros as saying.

Soros has frequently been a voice of gloom and doom as the U.S. economy slows amid a wrenching housing crisis and tightening credit. But the pessimism hasn't stopped his fund from making money.

According to Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine, the Quantum Endowment Fund — which Soros no longer manages — made $2.9 billion last year with returns of over 30 percent.

Soros has been promoting a new book, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis and What It Means." He has urged regulators to move more aggressively to improve market oversight to curb risks from excessive reliance on debt for financial speculation.

Link: http://www.cnbc.com/id/24829108/for/cnbc/

You know how many people surf Soros? Any pronouncement he makes can affect the whole community of traders.

and a lot of the traders there are trying to find a good entry point to buy DUG, which shorts oil. At some point, sentiment is going to reverse and oil will plunge for the medium term.

http://clearstation.etrade.com/cgi-bin/details?Symbol=dug&Refer=http://clearstation.etrade.com/

based on the technicals only. I don't know a thing about the supply/demand nor the fundamentals but being a former Wall Street guy who has watched markets of all kinds for many years... I think the current price will fall, greatly. Could then continue upward later on but I think we're due a correction of some size.

He threatened to dump hundreds of thousand of gallons of oil from the Strategic Reserve. It can be sold for a high price now, and re-purchased at a lower price later. Numbnuts Bush knows this, but he and his oil buddies are going to suck us dry first.