How does speculation raise gas prices? For a partial list of things traded as commodities see
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/ Speculators deal in every commodity. Why pick on gas prices? Which of the other commodities are speculators NOT trying to make a profit on?
Do any of you right wingnuts know what a commodity is? Why the Chicago Board Of Trade was started? For a simple answer
http://www.investorwords.com/975/commodity.html
commodity
Definitions (2)
1. A physical substance, such as food, grains, and metals, which is interchangeable with another product of the same type, and which investors buy or sell, usually through futures contracts. The price of the commodity is subject to supply and demand. Risk is actually the reason exchange trading of the basic agricultural products began. For example, a farmer risks the cost of producing a product ready for market at sometime in the future because he doesn't know what the selling price will be.
2. More generally, a product which trades on a commodity exchange; this would also include foreign currencies and financial instruments and indexes.
For more detailed info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity
In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs.[1] Economic commodities comprise goods and services.[2]
The more specific meaning of the term commodity is applied to goods only. It is used to describe a class of goods for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market.[3] A commodity has full or partial fungibility; that is, the market treats it as equivalent or nearly so no matter who produces it. "From the taste of wheat it is not possible to tell who produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist."[4] Petroleum and copper are examples of such commodities.[5] The price of copper is universal, and fluctuates daily based on global supply and demand. Items such as stereo systems, on the other hand, have many aspects of product differentiation, such as the brand, the user interface, the perceived quality etc. And, the more valuable a stereo is perceived to be, the more it will cost.
In contrast, one of the characteristics of a commodity good is that its price is determined as a function of its market as a whole. Well-established physical commodities have actively traded spot and derivative markets. Generally, these are basic resources and agricultural products such as iron ore, crude oil, coal, salt, sugar, coffee beans, soybeans, aluminum, copper, rice, wheat, gold, silver, palladium, and platinum. Soft commodities are goods that are grown, while hard commodities are the ones that are extracted through mining.
There is another important class of energy commodities which includes electricity, gas, coal and oil. Electricity has the particular characteristic that it is usually uneconomical to store, hence, electricity must be consumed as soon as it is produced.
Commodification (also called commoditization) occurs as a goods or services market loses differentiation across its supply base, often by the diffusion of the intellectual capital necessary to acquire or produce it efficiently. As such, goods that formerly carried premium margins for market participants have become commodities, such as generic pharmaceuticals and silicon chips.