In today's Short View Column, Dan McCrum examines falling oil prices and the futures market, and then concludes:

But the point of this story is not that some think they know what will happen next. Rather, it is that the price of one of the most widely used and heavily traded commodities has been able to halve in a matter of months.

The oil price is not some arcane derivative tied to dodgy mortgages, or a stake in an internet start up. It is the price of an industrial input paid by thousands of large and well-informed buyers. Low oil prices are not an unimaginable abstraction, merely something not seen for a while.

So, a question presents itself: if financial markets can be so wrong about the price of oil, what else are they missing?