[throwaway613834]

Thank you for sharing this! One outsider/laymen question:

> When one of these brokers came into the pit and yelled out "what's the market on DEC '9 crude" traders guessed he was hedging for mexico and quoted a price a full dollar above where the market was at

> The brokers had no choice but to accept this higher price.

I don't understand this. They didn't say they want to buy or sell anything. Why were they obligated to do either?

[stevenj]

I think they meant it's because traders knew that these brokers wanted to buy (to hedge), so the price was only going to go up further.