Burnt by contango

Speculative bubbles have been a feature of the markets for about as long as people have been trading. One of the earliest instances of this market phenomenon was associated with tulips in the Netherlands during the 1630s. More contemporary examples have focused on Japanese real estate during the 1980s, and the stocks of technology companies that sprouted up during the 1990s in California's Silicon Valley. Back in the present, soaring commodity prices are prompting some to argue that futures