What I meant by this is it's unclear how much of the money ends up buying product and how much ends up in derivatives of product. For example, when you buy stock options you don't actually buy or sell stocks and hence have no effect on the stock price. I'm not clear on whether options trading on commodities (or other fancy ass derivatives that seem to be the rage with wall street nowadays) are where the big numbers are or whether all this money is in the physical market. Even when looking at the physical market whether future or spot one has to look at the difference between long and short rather than just the number of contracts held by specs. If a heavy short position is squeezed by underlying commercials needing more product, then specs will losing money from a push upwards.

I know if I were a spec (and I'm not in the market in any way) then I'd be long but still one looks around the media and guesses that many people think we're at unfathomable heights ready to crash - one can't help but wonder if the media is playing a part for wall street in making sure that some specs are willing to take the losing bet.

Along the same lines, hedge funds and institutional investors tend to move as a herd because when something goes wrong they can all claim solace together that they did the right thing but lost out. ie. when all funds lose money, they blame the market but when a unique single fund opposing conventional wisdom goes wrong, well everyone knows who to blame.