Smith was known around Salomon as an able speculative trader.

MacColl states that Ladd was equally generous and miserly, a conservative investor, and an adventurous and speculative trader.

Hope: To Scare Speculators Central bankers generally also hope that intervention can scare off speculative traders who follow market trends but have little fundamental conviction.

Many speculative traders use the Commitments of Traders report to help them decide whether or not to take a long or short position.

Oil analysts said the likelihood of production interruptions and higher prices this year had prompted speculative traders to increase investments in commodities like crude oil and gasoline.

As civil war raged in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer, speculative traders here and in New York sent prices this month to 17-year highs.

Other economists say that the recent sharp drop in the value of the dollar against the Japanese yen may have badly hurt speculative traders, who then pulled back from the American bond market.

But currency plays are extremely risky, said Eileen M. Sanders, a Morningstar analyst, and are best left to speculative traders.

In such an environment, "for more speculative traders to turn around and take profits is not unusual," he said.

"They are managing the message to speculative traders by sticking to the quotas," said Roger Diwan, managing director at the Petroleum Finance Company, a Washington consulting company.