the attempt to find a signature for commodity market manipulation
has bogged down over pk's "where's the hoard ?"
my own conflation of oligs who sell real oil wheat etc
with the paper bats flying around em
ie the specs
doesn't help
and trying to claim the inelasticity is so great the hoard could be so small
you couldn't find it
like a soft ball sized h bomb
missed in the search for wmd's in iraq
the question that kills
if its so easy to [pop the price why wasn't it done yesterday
since profit max is the agent's mission
why wait till today ??? why not profit max everyday ??
recall these models always start with spot price equal to marginal cost of production....
but why would it ever be that if it could be higher ???
the deeper question is obviously
how oligs form prices and price path strategy
given the ultra crucial and public sensitivity of these basic "products"
gouging max is out of the question
so is any blind " market will bare" strategy that neglects the strategic defeat of substitutions
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a simple model won't cut it here
even if it shows an inter action between say contrat prices and futures prices
just extinguishing pk's stupid question as the holy grail here
fails to answer the question convincingly
the path of prices is a history a narrative
yes it can be simulated to generate its essentials
explained
and of course serve as a warning about bubble potentials
but never predict the next bubble till its already rising
