You Might Be a Speculator

With all due respects to Jeff Foxworthy.

• If you have a retirement account, you might be a speculator.
• If you've ever bought stock, you might be a speculator.
• If you ever bought baseball cards or Beanie Babies as an investment, you might be a speculator.
• If you buy airline tickets early because you expect the price to rise as the time of the flight gets closer, you might be a speculator.
• If you wait to buy scalped tickets, knowing that the price falls as game time nears, you might be a speculator.
• If you buy gas upon hearing that oil prices have jumped again, you might be a speculator.
• If you wait to buy gas upon hearing that oil prices have fallen, you might be a speculator.
• If you went to college and chose a major because of the future it was expected to give you, you might be a speculator.

Don't damn oil speculators.  For one thing, what motivates them also motivates us in a myriad of every day activities.  Damning the speculators is the pot calling the kettle black. 

In addition, while they may make today's oil prices higher, they smooth out variations over time and help ensure higher supplies (and lower prices, all else equal) sometime down the road. 

As Peter Gordon (HT to Craig Newmark) puts it:

All humans with a pulse plan beyond today and are, therefore, speculators. Those who do more of this than others are specialists who will be shown to have guessed wrong (in which case they suffer the consequences) or they end up being right and benefit the bystanders with their prescience. Information sharing improves every else's planning.