"Oil's Endless Bid: Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy," by Dan Dicker, Published Today by Wiley

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Apr 18, 2011) - Oil and gas prices soared 600% from 2003-2008, only to drop and rise unpredictably over the past few years, a cycle that continues today. With so many alternative, cheap energy solutions coming to fruition in recent years, many Americans now wonder why the country is bankrupting its economy paying foreign oil producers, why the price of oil continues to rise and fall so dramatically, and why the health of our economy depends so heavily on global oil markets.

Oil's Endless Bid: Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy (Wiley; Hardcover; April 2011; $34.95; 978-0-470-91562-2), a new nonfiction book by veteran oil trader and commentator Dan Dicker, published today by Wiley, addresses these issues and more. A timely and trenchant analysis of the extreme volatility of oil prices, Oil's Endless Bid illuminates one of the most important financial stories of the last decade, examining the changes that have taken place in the oil markets in recent years as investment banks have come to dominate energy trading and wreak havoc on consumer prices.

Drawing on his 25 years of experience as an oil trader, Dicker shows in Oil's Endless Bid how the increased financialization of oil markets by investment banks, energy hedge funds, managed futures funds and other vehicles has fundamentally transformed the oil markets, driving the unsustainably high prices of oil. Reflecting on these tremendous changes, Dicker argues that oil's endless bid has created a new financial market altogether, one overwhelming the physical realities of the natural oil market.

Most urgently, Dicker shows how the burden of these out-of-control cost fluctuations falls squarely on the American consumer, who pays higher prices even without ever choosing to invest in oil. Finally, Dicker turns his analysis towards solutions, laying out how swift federal recognition and action, with an increased U.S. focus on natural gas for our energy needs, may begin to lessen the pain at the pumps.

"I wrote Oil's Endless Bid to show how the treatment of oil as a stock by investors, far more than any number of globally significant competing factors, causes the dramatically higher prices that we've seen in recent years," said Dan Dicker. "I've witnessed seismic changes to the oil markets during my many years as a trader, and it's the everyday consumer who shoulders the burden."

About the author

Dan Dicker (New York, NY) had more than twenty years' experience on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he traded crude oil, natural gas, unleaded gasoline, and heating oil futures contracts for his own accounts. He is currently President and partner of MercBloc LLC, a wealth management firm, as well as a senior contributor at Jim Cramer's TheStreet.com, where he writes on the energy markets and investing in the energy space. He has lent his expertise as an oil markets analyst in hundreds of live radio and television broadcasts on CNBC, Bloomberg, Nightly Business Report, and ABC News.

If you are interested in an interview with Dan Dicker, please contact Carla Pisarro or Melissa Torra.

OIL'S ENDLESS BID
Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy
By Dan Dicker
Wiley; Hardcover; April 2011; $34.95
ISBN: 978-0-470-91562-2