Do you mean to trade the price movements?steven1976 wrote:If you were to buy into oil, what is the best way to go about it?
Or buying the actual instrument
I use a CFD platforms (plus500 & trading 212) to trade the price movements
Do you mean to trade the price movements?steven1976 wrote:If you were to buy into oil, what is the best way to go about it?
The platforms i use are for CFD's (contracts for difference) You never own the underlying asset its just speculation on the market price - just as we buy and sell odds on here on the financials its buy and sell the price (effectively trading the price movements rather than the odds)xitian wrote:What's the instrument you're actually trading though? I presume you can trade oil futures, an oil ETF, or go with a spreadbet on the oil spot price, possibly others? I doubt you want to actually buy a barrel of oil!
What's the recommended instrument, and why, or is it all pretty much the same? I expect it depends on the size you want to trade and the time frame you want to speculate/invest for?
There is subtle difference between each platform so its worth checking a few different ones if you intend to do a lot of volume over time, for the ad-hoc amounts i do its not something i really look at most of the spreads a very similar from one platform to the next and alot are floating spreads rather than fixed so its hard to say which is better than another at any one time.PeterLe wrote: Is there much difference between the spreads with these trading platforms ie Is there a prefered platform for value?
Rgards
Peter
There is a nightly intrest rate to pay and you do have to switch the contracts each month so for holding a position over several years there is probebly other ways like ETF's but i have never used them and perhaps its best answered by the likes of markmeets302 who does a lot on the finincials.xitian wrote:And with CFDs, is there a funding cost a bit like spreadbets when you have to roll the contract at the end of the term? So would they be efficient if you hold the position for several years for example? I think with CFDs and spreadbets, because they're leveraged products, you effectively get charged interest on the leverage don't you?
Would it be more cost effective for a long term view to buy an ETF which would have no running costs but probably a higher initial broker cost (and no leverage so you have to stump up the complete notional)?