Airline Pilot Central Forums - Airlines Unite! Act now!

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bbtp (Post 423881)

the website is pretty easy - i just used it to write my reps and ask that they lay off speculators...

Says the non-pilot on a airline pilot forum. Shouldnt you be on some financial forum talking about how great oil speculation is? :cool:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superpilot92 (Post 424035)

Says the non-pilot on a airline pilot forum. Shouldnt you be on some financial forum talking about how great oil speculation is? :cool:

non-airline pilot...
kick me off then - but i've got bonifides :). there are plenty of pilots right now who aren't presently airline pilots with the current condition of the industry!

Quote:

Originally Posted by andy171773 (Post 423781)

The purpose was to invoke a sense of apathy from the traveling public. You put "Chautauqua" on there, and they're going to start thinking this is for the benefit of Native Americans.

Haha! Now thats funny...

Or put American Eagle on there and people will say "Liiikkeee, i dont get it.. why does a clothing company care about oil so mucccchh... i meaaan, pleease!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbtp (Post 424094)

non-airline pilot...
kick me off then - but i've got bonifides :). there are plenty of pilots right now who aren't presently airline pilots with the current condition of the industry!

That's not by choice, but by necessity. Just because those "airline pilots" aren't airline pilots currently, that doesn't mean they don't still have financial responsibilities.
I don't think you understand what it's like investing approximately $80,000 to $110,000 into a career only to see any hopes of a stable income being swallowed up by the market. I realize I am not a market analyst, and you may very well understand the stock market dynamics a hell of a lot better than me. That being said, somebody is making alot of money off of this and when most companies point that blame towards speculators, I tend to agree.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeadHead (Post 424117)

Agreed, i find it pretty ironic that the only people that say it isnt speculation are the financial institutions and investors that are making lots of money by speculating. Oil is the one thing right now in the market they think they can count on to continue going up. The more the financial institutions tell everyone that oil will go up and hit 200 a barrel the more that gets investors to buy in, raising the price. If someone said they had the lotto numbers for tomorrow would you go buy a ticket? Except this particular lotto ticket carries with it the effects of destroying our economy and industry :cool:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superpilot92 (Post 424124)

Agreed, i find it pretty ironic that the only people that say it isnt speculation are the financial institutions and investors that are making lots of money off of the one thing in the market they THINK they can count on. The more the financial institutions tell everyone that oil will go up and hit 200 a barrel the more that gets investors to buy in, raising the price. If someone said they had the lotto numbers for tomorrow would you go buy a ticket? :cool:

Bottom Line is SOMEONE or SOME GROUP is making money from all this. If the entire country is paying for such an enormous price for fuel, that money has to be going to someone.
Like I said, I'm not an expert, but if the majority of fuel is traded 10-15 times before any physical delivery is taken, do you really need to be an expert to see what's going on.

bbtp,
I'm not sure what you do for a living, but imagine one day your bottom line dips steeply in the red because all you finances are being swallowed up by your production/service costs. Right now, airline pilots are just a large slice of the American public who in a few months won't be able to afford to drive to work anymore.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeadHead (Post 424117)

i do understand - i invested a huge chunk of my life (as well as a smaller chunk of cash on the backside) in the whole pilot thing. that's all a sunk cost - there's nothing i can do about it now other than savor the good memories. now i'm doing something else, because is makes sense for me and my family (both financially and otherwise).

you're right - pilots have "over-invested" in training for the "promise" of out-sized wages. union-driven wages do that by their very nature - when you demand (and get) a wage that is above the natural "market-driven" wage, you lower the rate of employment. this isn't the fault of "the market," it's a consquence of the laws of economics. there's nothing anyone can do about it, short of the government deciding it's going to subsidize pilot salaries (which would have its own negative consequences - and I think most would agree a pilot subsidy would be unfair to every other profession).

the "promise" of high wages was evaporating long before the price of oil boomed. the dramatic rise in the price of oil has only accelerated what was already happening. it's nice to be able to blame someone, but in this case, blaming the speculators is blaming ghosts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbtp (Post 424140)

the "promise" of high wages was evaporating long before the price of oil boomed. the dramatic rise in the price of oil has only accelerated what was already happening. it's nice to be able to blame someone, but in this case, blaming the speculators is blaming ghosts.

So just to be clear here, You are saying Speculation has NO effect on the spike in oil prices? :cool:

Quote:

Originally Posted by bbtp (Post 424140)

Personally, I would like to blame oil speculation or some greedy hedge fund manager, but realistically I don't know enough about how it all works to say that. I do feel, however, that someone is profiting off of all this while the economy suffers.

Government regulation, by association to deciding a pilot's salary, is a double edged sword in my opinion. The government can provide a stable industry, but the downside to that would be a lot less jobs.
I think their needs to be a delicate balance here, as well as a way of controlling operational costs. Airlines today are continuously gambling on the hopes that fuel costs will not surpass their profit viability.
Hedging is just buying airlines time and money in the grand scheme of things.
I think a big part of the problem was largely due to the fact that oil prices had been so cheap in this country for such a long time that everyone took it for granted. The Ultra-Low cost of fuel never gave people a reason to limit or control their consumption, until today that is.

The government has worked so hard to prevent any one company from monopolizing a industry, Sirius/XM, DAL/NWA, and Microsoft just to name a few. My question is how come oil companies don't seem to have as many legislators restricting their growth?
If I had to venture a guess, I'd say corruption, but again that's just a guess.

Money looks after money, always has always will. Problem today is that the hard work, dedication, and commitment of the many is used to fund the wealth and greed of the few anyway you look at it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by milky (Post 423248)

I wish just one of you had some clue as to how our markets work before you spew on here. Speculation is not the culprit in the rising cost of fuel. There are speculators on the futures market for just about every commodity that is sold in the U.S. If the price of oil was not going up, speculators would not buy futures at higher prices. When the price of oil dropped dramatically in the past, was that the speculators' fault too?

What you are asking here is for government to regulate the price of oil which is a global commodity. This is ignorant and just shows how little each of you know about how the market works. Democrats and media blaming speculators is just a way for them to seem like they are doing something without actually doing anything. Stopping the decline of the value of the dollar and putting more oil into production is the way to bring down the cost of oil. Futures markets just reflect the actual cost of the oil.

Maybe you can understand how many of you have no idea how free market economics works. Many of you guys were willing to speculate on your income by paying 70,000-100,000 for your ratings to fly airplanes. In the real market, all of you would be done trading on the futures markets because you can only make so many bad trades before you are out of money. In this case, you would find out that putting yourself that much in debt for the chance to be a regional pilot and make 20,000/year is a bad purchase on the market. Somebody sold you a really bad trade, and you lost. Now, if the oil speculators bought oil for as high as you paid for your ratings, they would all be in trouble because NOBODY would pay that much for a barrel of oil. So, they would be holding useless oil that cannot be sold for what they owe. They would have to sell for a loss, and most people cannot operate on a loss for long without going broke. SO, recognize that futures traders are only buying oil for what they believe will be paid on the open market. If the market does not bear the price, they will lose their shirt. THAT IS IT. They do not hold some secret power to raise the price.

The conspiracy theory is bunk. Quit making yourselves look dumb.

That's more or less true in a well regulated open market. The key is transparency. The Hunt Bros tried to corner the silver market, when other speculators saw the huge position the Hunts held they realized the price was artificially high and they dumped their holdings. The Hunts were burned to the tune of $2Billion. Thats the traditional risk to cornering the market. What happens if non traditional players with massive amounts of money enter the market? Now add in a market where there is no transparency, i.e. you can not see who holds what or who's trading with whom. You get wash sales. What if these new players, all playing the same game (a herd mentality where no one company corners the market but as a group they have), own 70% of all existing futures contracts? As they trade amongst themselves (no risk in a wash sale) they are holding these contracts out of the market( artificial limiting of supply). The true speculator (who intends to take delivery) must enter the market and bid for what is available at that time. He must his business requires it. Thats trucking companies, airlines, refineries, etc. With these daily trends he can not sit back and hope that fear of a contracts expiration will cause a drop in price. Oil in normal trading is far to liquid for that. I'll show you that supply isn't the issue, I'll show you that the weak dollar doesn't cover current price either. What have been the effects of the Commodities Modernization Act? Why does the Intercontinental exchange exist? Who trades there and why don't those investment banks etc trade on the NYMEX? Please don't throw out cheap easy stuff like it's the fault of leftists, environmentalists, or the scapegoat of politicians. Stick to the point and explain the price.