I see you didnt reciprocate the courtesy of not making an argument from personal incredulity. These things are complex af. When the people who optimize supply chains all day every day tell me that speculation market is more of an hindrance than help, I'm not going to take your random argument to be worth anything.

All your arguments are anecdote and opinion.

What do you expect, you are one making a positive claim. That the speculation market is helpful.

I see. Your claim that it it is entirely negative is fine to make without any support whereas my claim that there are some situations that could be positive (only one suffices) is not okay even when support has been given (any mine that is opened or distribution center that is opened employs speculation).

You are just making a bunch of claims with no support but “people I trust say so so the claims are true”. Now I really will bow out.

I am taking the null position here. That the speculation market doesn't help. If something isn't helping and is extracting value from the market its by definition detrimental. The onus is on you to provide the proof for positive positions, that the speculation market does help.

Nobody is forced to use the futures markets. The onus is on you to explain why it’s negative despite all of the sellers and buyers choosing to participate there.

To me it seems, you both are rather debating semantics.

Of course it is "speculating" trying to estimate fuel prices, but this is not meant, when people condemn "gambling" on the stock market. What they mean is people with lots money investing wherever short term profits are possible and often gaming the market while doing so. So creating unexpected price changes for the actual industries needing those supplies and they obviously don't like that. But I couldn't draw a clear line between "necessary gambling" and "unnecessary gambling".

> So creating unexpected price changes for the actual industries needing those supplies and they obviously don't like that.

Followed by

> But I couldn't draw a clear line between "necessary gambling" and "unnecessary gambling".

What? you literally just drew a very crisp line.

I merely brought 2 examples and I can surely bring more, but this is not the same as in general being able to draw a clear line on the topic. In other words, I have no clear general definition, as the topic is quite complicated and I don't think I can claim, I really understand the stock market.

The futures market is the only thing that allows you to lock in a price to buy something 12 months from now at a reasonably consistent price. How is that a hindrance?

The existence of the futures market does not prevent a copper provider from entering into an exclusive sales contract to sell 12 months from now to a specific consumer. However, unless they match the current 12 month contract price, one of them is taking a bad deal with what they can get on a much more liquid market. Additionally, their counter party risk is now much more significant because they are tied to one other party.

Maybe you could actually offer something specific about how “the speculation market is more of a hindrance than a help”?

So far whenever I see this, it’s people who don’t like that the price changes on them but their solution is to remove participants from the market to a point where it is so illiquid the lack of trading looks like the price isn’t moving.