Yesterday commodity prices fell heavily in New York; crude oil by ten percent. Compared with the rises over recent years and months these falls are small, but for a one-day trading they are large.
On the BBC news a US commodity trading expert remarked that, with computerised trading, the market is now ‘very efficient’; nobody ‘really lost’ in these market falls.
This is wonderful news. In a market that consists solely in the transfer of ownership, in various sophisticated ways, of various naturally occurring, and usually finite, substances, and that directly itself requires no major physical infrastructure (it depends for its existence on mines and farms, etc. but the market can grow without any increase in those), value has dramatically increased over the past few years (no losers there presumably) and has ‘corrected’ itself yesterday with a marked fall without any losers.
This is the alchemists’ dream achieved. This is the new paradigm. This is the way we can all become richer and richer without pain or loss.
