"Contrary to what has been reported in The Washington Post, it is factually inaccurate, and the CFTC has never reported, that financial firms speculating for their clients or for themselves account for about 81 percent of the oil contracts traded on NYMEX," the CFTC said.The commission argued that instead, noncommercial traders make up about 50% of both the long and short side open interest in West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures and options.
"The Post's 81% figure seems to assume that all swaps dealers are engaged in speculative trading," the CFTC said, noting that swap dealer activity often involves serving as a counterparty to commercial entities hedging price risk exposure.
It sure makes you wonder what the Washington Post's private agenda is, doesn't it. When one considers that the Posts doesn't have the data (only the CFTC and exchanges do), whey would the publish data to make a point based upon erroneous data? Here is the full article:
