Hedging shifts the speculative burden onto ordinary laborer-speculators

Evidence

Yet, under conditions where speculation is the norm in all financial transactions, the very distinctions between speculating and investing become themselves blurred. Joseph Vogl (2014, 67) describes a present situation in which “the criterion for distinguishing between real and imaginary value no longer applies, and where hedging (or trade with financial derivatives) requires investment in risk (and thus more trade with financial derivatives)” such that “not only does investment become indistinguishable from speculation but both gain a new lease of life as matching sides of one and the same operation.” As a consequence, traders “who ‘speculate’ on the risky difference between present and future prices—now appear to be those who avoid all hedging and thus all speculative trade.” The hard work of finance, then, falls on the shoulders of a new class of laborer-speculators: ordinary people residing outside the world of exchange markets who don’t enjoy access to the resources required for successful hedging. These laborer-speculators become increasingly absorbed in the process of speculating on their future—and they do so ever more intensely, ever more desperately. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 68

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the central figure of the ‘laborer-speculator’ — ordinary people forced to speculate on their own future without hedging resources.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of showing how trading-floor logic migrates outward: the laborer-speculator is the conduit by which speculative subjectivity spreads to everyday life — links to Vogl and also echoes Marx’s formal subsumption logic applied to risk.