Capital has been forced to turn to speculative activities.
"Anyone playing the weather side, which is a popular speculative activity, may be a bit disappointed."
The assumption is that speculative activity will decrease over time and the value of the assets increase.
"The price has been driven higher by investment and acute speculative activity, for two key reasons," he said.
Many analysts have argued for months that evidence of speculative activity has increased over the last year.
"There are real obvious signs that speculative activity is on the rise."
Volcker has argued that such speculative activity played a key role in the financial crisis of 2007-2010.
And, in time, they could reduce some speculative activity by raising the cost of trading.
But the mere possibility of such a development has fueled speculative activity.
In the past few days, there has been a great deal of speculative activity and we wanted to calm the market down.