Are Oil Prices Rigged?

Thanks to margin in the futures market, you can trade ten times more oil than you could otherwise afford. For only $9,000, you could control more than $140,000 of oil at recent highs.

All told, about one billion barrels of oil are traded daily through futures contracts at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). This volume significantly overshadows the 80 million barrels of oil consumed each day worldwide. Yet this large volume of trading is misleading. Most of the trades are just noise: speculators going for quick profits, taking a position, and closing it out immediately.