Malcolm Moore

They're simply trying to settle at a level where both sides are happy and can make money.

And the financial players are there to absorb the risk from...

the physical players, the refineries and the oil producers.

So essentially, the oil companies and the refineries are transferring their risk to people who know how to manage risk, financial players.

And financial players are taking a cut and saying, we're willing to think that this is probably going to be around here.

I mean, it helps make the market run efficiently.

So I

I don't think they're distorting where the price is.

I just think that people think it's a crystal ball.

That's not its purpose.

Its purpose is to deliver certainty today for people who are trying to make their plans so they don't have to worry about what the future price is.

They don't have pointy heads.

I mean, I've heard all sorts of prices, right?

But most of them congregate around the $200 a barrel mark.

And the reason for that is, you know, if we remember, the all-time record for a barrel of oil was just over $140, and that was about 14 years ago.

So actually, in today's terms, in real terms, the spot price is still...

Not that high.

But on the other side of the ledger, nobody really knows what happens when oil goes above a certain level in terms of demand.

Right.

Nobody knows whether people really just say, actually, I'm going to stop driving now or I'm going to stop flying or like nobody knows how quickly demand collapses.