How to buy oil in the stock market?

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aares
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How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by aares »

I have some extra money in my etrade account, and I was thinking about buying oil shares.

I know ETF like USO don't track oil prices, so are there any other ETF that do closely track oil? Or is the only way to do it like that is to buy oil futures?
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by bnes »

This question is more appropriate for a speculation focused forum. This site is focused on long term low cost investing.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by 3504PIR »

Ironically, Occidental Petroleum stock price tracks the price of oil fairly well. Ticker: OXY
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by cfs »

aares wrote:I have some extra money in my etrade account, and I was thinking about buying oil shares.

I know ETF like USO don't track oil prices, so are there any other ETF that do closely track oil? Or is the only way to do it like that is to buy oil futures?
Aares, I would not recommend investing in oil or any individual stock or sector ETF, but you can do a search for "oil price etf list" and you will get the complete listing. Good luck with your investment in oil.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Tigermoose »

You can buy futures in DBC. For oil in stocks, you would purchase an energy fund of some sort.
Institutions matter
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by tadamsmar »

USO is intended to track spot oil prices, not sure how well they do.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by staythecourse »

tadamsmar wrote:USO is intended to track spot oil prices, not sure how well they do.
That is not correct. ALL commodity funds outside of gold, silver, and metals are priced on the futures market. That is the whole point of the futures market. One can not buy and store billions of barrels of oil or thousands of pigs or a mountain of sugar in your backyard. USO is the same, but it is based on near month oil futures contracts about to expire.

In order to track oil spot price exact it would likely take an ETN to do it. Surprised no one has done it yet, but if oil prices were to go through the roof I would guarantee someone will come up with that product.

To the OP, Make sure you do your own DD IF you are seriously considering any of the CCF. One should really understand futures markets before getting into it.

Good luck.
"The stock market [fluctuation], therefore, is noise. A giant distraction from the business of investing.” | -Jack Bogle
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by coldaudio »

I like UCO and DTO for oil
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Aptenodytes »

At the risk of appearing overly snarky, do you really think that someone who doesn't know how to look things up on Google should be doing something like speculating on the direction of oil prices?
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by tadamsmar »

staythecourse wrote:
tadamsmar wrote:USO is intended to track spot oil prices, not sure how well they do.
That is not correct. ALL commodity funds outside of gold, silver, and metals are priced on the futures market. That is the whole point of the futures market. One can not buy and store billions of barrels of oil or thousands of pigs or a mountain of sugar in your backyard. USO is the same, but it is based on near month oil futures contracts about to expire.

In order to track oil spot price exact it would likely take an ETN to do it. Surprised no one has done it yet, but if oil prices were to go through the roof I would guarantee someone will come up with that product.

To the OP, Make sure you do your own DD IF you are seriously considering any of the CCF. One should really understand futures markets before getting into it.

Good luck.
What am I not correct about? The only claim I made is that USO is intended to track spot oil prices.
USO, on the other hand, seeks “to reflect the changes in percentage terms of the spot price of light, sweet crude oil…as measured by the changes in the price of the futures contract for light, sweet crude oil traded on the [NYMEX].” To accomplish this goal, USO invests in NYMEX futures contracts and cash (the daily holdings are available here). So since USO actually holds the assets from which the returns of OIL are derived, the returns will generally be highly correlated, but not identical.
http://etfdb.com/2010/uso-vs-oil-a-bett ... e-oil-etf/

OIL is another ETF intended to track oil prices that is discussed in the link I just quoted
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by deikel »

Aptenodytes wrote:At the risk of appearing overly snarky, do you really think that someone who doesn't know how to look things up on Google should be doing something like speculating on the direction of oil prices?
What makes you think the OP did not google already and is waiting for a second opinion to come to the same answer for confirmation ?

Or

What makes you think a google search would actually give you the correct answer (The Wiki-truth anyone) ?

WIth above argument probably 80% of all questions on this forum are obsolete...

I usually assume that people are not gunking a forum or trolling around for fun and have legit questions. Could they have found an answer by other means - maybe, hard to say, since everyone starts from their own point of knowledge and their own abilities to ask questions - thats what makes this forum usually so valuable, people are willing to answer anyones questions - regardless how silly they may seem to some and hence no one needs to be afraid to ask...quite powerful IMO
Everything you read in this post is my personal opinion. If you disagree with this disclaimer, please un-read the text immediately and destroy any copy or remembrance of it.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by staythecourse »

tadamsmar wrote:
staythecourse wrote:
tadamsmar wrote:USO is intended to track spot oil prices, not sure how well they do.
That is not correct. ALL commodity funds outside of gold, silver, and metals are priced on the futures market. That is the whole point of the futures market. One can not buy and store billions of barrels of oil or thousands of pigs or a mountain of sugar in your backyard. USO is the same, but it is based on near month oil futures contracts about to expire.

In order to track oil spot price exact it would likely take an ETN to do it. Surprised no one has done it yet, but if oil prices were to go through the roof I would guarantee someone will come up with that product.

To the OP, Make sure you do your own DD IF you are seriously considering any of the CCF. One should really understand futures markets before getting into it.

Good luck.
What am I not correct about? The only claim I made is that USO is intended to track spot oil prices.
USO, on the other hand, seeks “to reflect the changes in percentage terms of the spot price of light, sweet crude oil…as measured by the changes in the price of the futures contract for light, sweet crude oil traded on the [NYMEX].” To accomplish this goal, USO invests in NYMEX futures contracts and cash (the daily holdings are available here). So since USO actually holds the assets from which the returns of OIL are derived, the returns will generally be highly correlated, but not identical.
http://etfdb.com/2010/uso-vs-oil-a-bett ... e-oil-etf/

OIL is another ETF intended to track oil prices that is discussed in the link I just quoted
Sorry did not mean to get snarky.

Just wanted to make sure the OP understood the significance of the work "intended". In this case, I did not want him/ her to assume hey USO to oil is like GLD to gold. That is the mistake many make. The product is a futures product and want to make sure they knew it was not the same thing as owing oil itself. This was a mistake MANY, MANY folks (professional as well) made when they threw their hat into CCF.

Good luck.
"The stock market [fluctuation], therefore, is noise. A giant distraction from the business of investing.” | -Jack Bogle
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by tadamsmar »

Aptenodytes wrote:At the risk of appearing overly snarky, do you really think that someone who doesn't know how to look things up on Google should be doing something like speculating on the direction of oil prices?
I don't think it's that easy, at least if the goal is to "invest" in the spot price. Nothing seems to approximate it that well. He mentioned one EFT (USO) that sort of tracks it so I think he did his homework. Quite reasonable to ask on a forum if there is anything that tracks better.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Aptenodytes »

tadamsmar wrote:
Aptenodytes wrote:At the risk of appearing overly snarky, do you really think that someone who doesn't know how to look things up on Google should be doing something like speculating on the direction of oil prices?
I don't think it's that easy, at least if the goal is to "invest" in the spot price. Nothing seems to approximate it that well. He mentioned one EFT (USO) that sort of tracks it so I think he did his homework. Quite reasonable to ask on a forum if there is anything that tracks better.
OK, I will apologize for being too snarky. The basic point probably holds, though, no? If an investment idea is too hard to figure out, you should probably rule it out.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by tadamsmar »

staythecourse wrote: Just wanted to make sure the OP understood the significance of the work "intended". In this case, I did not want him/ her to assume hey USO to oil is like GLD to gold. That is the mistake many make. The product is a futures product and want to make sure they knew it was not the same thing as owing oil itself. This was a mistake MANY, MANY folks (professional as well) made when they threw their hat into CCF.

Good luck.
Yes, there is a plot near the bottom of this page that shows that USO and OIL don't track all that well.

http://etfdb.com/2010/uso-vs-oil-a-bett ... e-oil-etf/

Nobody should say that these ETFs are as good as GLD (at tracking, that is).
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Jeff7 »

cfs wrote:
aares wrote:I have some extra money in my etrade account, and I was thinking about buying oil shares.

I know ETF like USO don't track oil prices, so are there any other ETF that do closely track oil? Or is the only way to do it like that is to buy oil futures?
Aares, I would not recommend investing in oil or any individual stock or sector ETF, but you can do a search for "oil price etf list" and you will get the complete listing. Good luck with your investment in oil.
IF Lockheed Martin's new fusion reactor thing pans out, oil might not even do well. ;)
I don't know if I can place adequate emphasis on the "if" in that sentence though.


But heck, plain aluminum metal was a precious metal at one time, more rare as gold. Napoleon is said to have had some aluminum utensils, used at special occasions to show off his wealth. Then in the late 1800s, Charles Martin Hall figured out a way to inexpensively extract aluminum from the ore.
So much for investments in that precious metal.
Now it's so cheap that it's regularly thrown into landfills as trash.
(Seriously though, if nothing else, recycle aluminum cans. It takes about 95% less energy to melt aluminum than it does to extract it from the ore. Aluminum is in fact very reactive, so it takes a lot of energy to pry apart those chemical bonds. Less energy --> lower costs.)
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by ourbrooks »

Your best bet in a publically traded vehicle is a Master Limited Partnership that has assets in oil production or oil pipelines. Some of them own producing oil wells and make their money by selling the oil. When the price of oil goes up, so do their profits. Most of these involve the dreaded K-1 tax form, but there are now also ETF wrappers around MLPs; Alerian is the largest.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Valuethinker »

Jeff7 wrote:
cfs wrote:
aares wrote:I have some extra money in my etrade account, and I was thinking about buying oil shares.

I know ETF like USO don't track oil prices, so are there any other ETF that do closely track oil? Or is the only way to do it like that is to buy oil futures?
Aares, I would not recommend investing in oil or any individual stock or sector ETF, but you can do a search for "oil price etf list" and you will get the complete listing. Good luck with your investment in oil.
IF Lockheed Martin's new fusion reactor thing pans out, oil might not even do well. ;)
I don't know if I can place adequate emphasis on the "if" in that sentence though.
I am surprised they went live with that. Because if they have done it, it's as important to National Security, potentially, as the development of the hydrogen bomb. A fusion reactor that small would also be a great bomb-making plant. A race as fond of political and religious conflict as ours is, armed with miniature nuclear reactors, would struggle not to extinct itself-- one might speculate that is why the universe seems to be short of obvious signs of intelligent life (the dying cries of those civilizations buried in what looks like an astronomic phenomenon).

So therefore I am fairly convinced that 'nothing to see here folks. Move along'.
But heck, plain aluminum metal was a precious metal at one time, more rare as gold. Napoleon is said to have had some aluminum utensils, used at special occasions to show off his wealth. Then in the late 1800s, Charles Martin Hall figured out a way to inexpensively extract aluminum from the ore.
So much for investments in that precious metal.
Now it's so cheap that it's regularly thrown into landfills as trash.
(Seriously though, if nothing else, recycle aluminum cans. It takes about 95% less energy to melt aluminum than it does to extract it from the ore. Aluminum is in fact very reactive, so it takes a lot of energy to pry apart those chemical bonds. Less energy --> lower costs.)
On the other hand lots of valuable metals then are still valuable. No good substitutes for copper-- yet. Or iron ore/ steel (and coking coal). Lots of metals that were of only incidental use then (platinum) but are now even more useful.

'The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones' as Sheikh Yamani famously said. Yet oil is such a usefully high density source of energy for transportation that it's hard to see it being replaced universally.

You have Natural Gas Liquids (oil from NG). You can use NG in transport, or electricity (eg electrified trains). You can use NG as a fuel for shipping (EU shipping emission regulations are forcing things that way). Fuel cells are no way there, yet (and themselves have expensive and possibly rare component substances). Flywheels don't seem to have panned out (spun out? ;-)). Investigations of aviation suggest hydrogen will not work well as an alternative fuel (helium, for dirigibles? Believe it or not the helium shortage is becoming a national security issue). There's also a polonium shortage which could cripple the Space Program (we are literally about to run out of reactor fuel for deep space probes).
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Valuethinker »

tadamsmar wrote:
staythecourse wrote: Just wanted to make sure the OP understood the significance of the work "intended". In this case, I did not want him/ her to assume hey USO to oil is like GLD to gold. That is the mistake many make. The product is a futures product and want to make sure they knew it was not the same thing as owing oil itself. This was a mistake MANY, MANY folks (professional as well) made when they threw their hat into CCF.

Good luck.
Yes, there is a plot near the bottom of this page that shows that USO and OIL don't track all that well.

http://etfdb.com/2010/uso-vs-oil-a-bett ... e-oil-etf/

Nobody should say that these ETFs are as good as GLD (at tracking, that is).
;-).

I think the thing with GLD is that it can hold physical gold? It is a dense and highly valuable material, so storage costs are minimal. Hiring a warehouse and filling it with millions of barrels of oil is expensive.

If you trade financial futures in commodities in market moving size, and you don't have access to physical storage, the arbitrageurs on the other side can see you coming and really hurt you. My own view (not buttressed by analysis or deep knowledge) is that you can't trade the futures market (in size) without also having a presence on the physical side. That's why commodity trading firms exist, and that's why they are large businesses (think Glencor, Cargill etc.).
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by DualIncomeNoDebt »

OP, pass on this. Commodities markets are rigged, and the biggest fraud of them all is oil. Not an exaggeration given the significant CFTC and DOJ activity in many markets, including LIBOR, Forex, aluminum, gold, silver, and in the not-too-distant past copper, platinum, palladium, and everything else.

The Brent/WTI spreads are a license to steal, it's ridiculous. The ICE exchange is a joke, as are the contract expiry ramps which are like clockwork. Also, forget the underlying commodity; I wouldn't even put money in an oil commodity fund. Such funds get their heads handed to them by the swap/derivative traders, they can see your order miles away and will frontrun and outspeed you or your fund on every trade. Easy pickings, and you are the target. If you do some research, you can find articles and studies about how commodity funds did poorly even when oil was ramping over $140 a barrel due to derivatives punching them in the face every day (hence why so many funds trade in their own pools to avoid the skimmers). If you still want to trade oil, become an active trader, get paid to assist a trading desk, and help them skim the market like every other manipulator. Either that, or go help the airlines hedge their fuel costs. Here's a powerpoint to get you started. If all of this is too much, then just by Exxon and be done with it.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by LadyGeek »

ourbrooks wrote:Your best bet in a publically traded vehicle is a Master Limited Partnership that has assets in oil production or oil pipelines. Some of them own producing oil wells and make their money by selling the oil. When the price of oil goes up, so do their profits. Most of these involve the dreaded K-1 tax form, but there are now also ETF wrappers around MLPs; Alerian is the largest.
The wiki has some background info: Master limited partnerships
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by tadamsmar »

Off topic, but:
Valuethinker wrote: I am surprised they went live with that. Because if they have done it, it's as important to National Security, potentially, as the development of the hydrogen bomb. A fusion reactor that small would also be a great bomb-making plant.
A fusion (aka hydrogen) bomb requires a fission bomb, the magnetic containment used in a fusion reactor does not provide the pressures that can be attained with a fission bomb.

I suppose a fusion reactor could blow up like any other furnace due to the amount of heat energy that will be contained and transferred. Some of the skeptics claimed that there is a problem with transferring large amounts of heat from the sort of small fusion furnace that Lockheed is trying to develop.
6) Could you use fusion reactor research to make hydrogen bombs?

No. Although hydrogen bombs do use fusion reactions, to detonate they require an additional fission bomb. Magnetically-confined fusion cannot itself produce the amount of instantaneous power required for a weapon. Magnetic confinement fusion research was even shared between the US and the USSR during the height of the Cold War.
http://www.fusionfuture.org/fusion-faq/
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Valuethinker »

tadamsmar wrote:Off topic, but:
Valuethinker wrote: I am surprised they went live with that. Because if they have done it, it's as important to National Security, potentially, as the development of the hydrogen bomb. A fusion reactor that small would also be a great bomb-making plant.
A fusion (aka hydrogen) bomb requires a fission bomb, the magnetic containment used in a fusion reactor does not provide the pressures that can be attained with a fission bomb.

I suppose a fusion reactor could blow up like any other furnace due to the amount of heat energy that will be contained and transferred. Some of the skeptics claimed that there is a problem with transferring large amounts of heat from the sort of small fusion furnace that Lockheed is trying to develop.
6) Could you use fusion reactor research to make hydrogen bombs?

No. Although hydrogen bombs do use fusion reactions, to detonate they require an additional fission bomb. Magnetically-confined fusion cannot itself produce the amount of instantaneous power required for a weapon. Magnetic confinement fusion research was even shared between the US and the USSR during the height of the Cold War.
http://www.fusionfuture.org/fusion-faq/
I was thinking you could use the fast neutron flow to make bomb grade atomic material? I am not clear in my mind whether U 235, U 238 or Plutonium but I think the latter?

Any little country with some uranium and a few nuclear physicists could then build a bomb-- at least a crude one.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by tadamsmar »

Valuethinker wrote: I was thinking you could use the fast neutron flow to make bomb grade atomic material? I am not clear in my mind whether U 235, U 238 or Plutonium but I think the latter?

Any little country with some uranium and a few nuclear physicists could then build a bomb-- at least a crude one.
I can't find anything about the danger that fusion reactors can be used as breeder reactors. If anything, it seems that a fusion reactor would complete with the next generation fission breeder reactors that are under development and lead to less danger of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Jeff7 »

Valuethinker wrote:I am surprised they went live with that. Because if they have done it, it's as important to National Security, potentially, as the development of the hydrogen bomb. A fusion reactor that small would also be a great bomb-making plant. A race as fond of political and religious conflict as ours is, armed with miniature nuclear reactors, would struggle not to extinct itself-- one might speculate that is why the universe seems to be short of obvious signs of intelligent life (the dying cries of those civilizations buried in what looks like an astronomic phenomenon).

So therefore I am fairly convinced that 'nothing to see here folks. Move along'.
I doubt that you can use a fusion reactor to make bombs.
- If containment is lost, that means the plasma will expand. It will immediately begin to cool down, so fusion will stop very quickly. It is self-extinguishing.
- It won't have enough fuel in the chamber at any one time to be able to explode like you're thinking.
- To make a fusion bomb, you first need a fission bomb to act as the trigger.


On the other hand lots of valuable metals then are still valuable. No good substitutes for copper-- yet. Or iron ore/ steel (and coking coal). Lots of metals that were of only incidental use then (platinum) but are now even more useful.

'The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones' as Sheikh Yamani famously said. Yet oil is such a usefully high density source of energy for transportation that it's hard to see it being replaced universally.

You have Natural Gas Liquids (oil from NG). You can use NG in transport, or electricity (eg electrified trains). You can use NG as a fuel for shipping (EU shipping emission regulations are forcing things that way). Fuel cells are no way there, yet (and themselves have expensive and possibly rare component substances). Flywheels don't seem to have panned out (spun out? ;-)). Investigations of aviation suggest hydrogen will not work well as an alternative fuel (helium, for dirigibles? Believe it or not the helium shortage is becoming a national security issue). There's also a polonium shortage which could cripple the Space Program (we are literally about to run out of reactor fuel for deep space probes).
Quite true. Yes, iron is used in everything now. (Though it sure is cheap these days. ;))

Another big if is lithium-ion battery tech: Researchers are examining the microscopic structure of the electrodes in a li-ion cell to figure out why they lose capacity, and also why their capacity is what it is. They're suggesting that improvements could be made in the chemistry by as much as a factor of 100. Eventually. At that point though, things like electric passenger airplanes become a possibility, much less electric cars.
I'd also hate to think what would happen if that energy were accidentally released all at once. :shock:


Polonium: You likely mean plutonium? That's what's used in RTEGs. This is something that would be made in breeder reactors, as it is not something that is mined. That's probably Department of Energy territory.


Either way, oil is a very specific sector to trade in, and that does definitely go against the idea of riding the entire market average.
Maybe use some play money for it that you wouldn't mind losing? Just as a hobby sort of thing. That can get tempting though to start dumping more money into oil during the bull markets, and then portfolio risk starts climbing.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Tanelorn »

Valuethinker wrote:
Jeff7 wrote:Lockheed Martin's new fusion reactor thing pans out, oil might not even do well. ;)
I don't know if I can place adequate emphasis on the "if" in that sentence though.
I am surprised they went live with that. Because if they have done it, it's as important to National Security, potentially, as the development of the hydrogen bomb. A fusion reactor that small would also be a great bomb-making plant.
If it were easy to make a fusion reactor keep going long enough to be a weapon, we would have fusion power plants instead of decades of engineering efforts and nothing yet practical. The waste products of typical deuterium/tritium fusion are helium (which we could use more of anyway) and whatever the stray neutrons hits in the reactor. A bunch of radioactive concrete and steel isn't ideal, but it's less effective as a weapon than a club.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Tanelorn »

To OP: if you want to track oil futures prices, buy USO or one of the other oil ETFs/ETNs. If you want to track oil spot prices (which is usually what the news and everyone talks about, $80/barrel or whatever), you have to buy a tank and stick the oil in it yourself. None of the exchange traded products can track spot oil prices.

You can of course invest in many different oil services companies, from refiners, E&P, pipelines, etc, and these all have varying degrees of exposure to spot oil prices. I suppose there are some exchange traded depleting trusts that offer a direct play on oil and natural gas prices via their production, but those are often so sketchy or overvalued I hesitate to even mention them.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Valuethinker »

Jeff7 wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:I am surprised they went live with that. Because if they have done it, it's as important to National Security, potentially, as the development of the hydrogen bomb. A fusion reactor that small would also be a great bomb-making plant. A race as fond of political and religious conflict as ours is, armed with miniature nuclear reactors, would struggle not to extinct itself-- one might speculate that is why the universe seems to be short of obvious signs of intelligent life (the dying cries of those civilizations buried in what looks like an astronomic phenomenon).

So therefore I am fairly convinced that 'nothing to see here folks. Move along'.
I doubt that you can use a fusion reactor to make bombs.
- If containment is lost, that means the plasma will expand. It will immediately begin to cool down, so fusion will stop very quickly. It is self-extinguishing.
- It won't have enough fuel in the chamber at any one time to be able to explode like you're thinking.
- To make a fusion bomb, you first need a fission bomb to act as the trigger.
Actually you are misinterpreting me?

I said bomb factories. Which means, in essence, fast neutrons onto uranium raw material to make atomic weapons. Now there definitely was a plan for a hybrid fusion/ fission reactor, which would use uranium as the blanketing material.

That much fusion should produce a neutron flow. I did find this book on Google



http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=p2Ar ... um&f=false
On the other hand lots of valuable metals then are still valuable. No good substitutes for copper-- yet. Or iron ore/ steel (and coking coal). Lots of metals that were of only incidental use then (platinum) but are now even more useful.

'The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones' as Sheikh Yamani famously said. Yet oil is such a usefully high density source of energy for transportation that it's hard to see it being replaced universally.

You have Natural Gas Liquids (oil from NG). You can use NG in transport, or electricity (eg electrified trains). You can use NG as a fuel for shipping (EU shipping emission regulations are forcing things that way). Fuel cells are no way there, yet (and themselves have expensive and possibly rare component substances). Flywheels don't seem to have panned out (spun out? ;-)). Investigations of aviation suggest hydrogen will not work well as an alternative fuel (helium, for dirigibles? Believe it or not the helium shortage is becoming a national security issue). There's also a polonium shortage which could cripple the Space Program (we are literally about to run out of reactor fuel for deep space probes).
Quite true. Yes, iron is used in everything now. (Though it sure is cheap these days. ;))

Another big if is lithium-ion battery tech: Researchers are examining the microscopic structure of the electrodes in a li-ion cell to figure out why they lose capacity, and also why their capacity is what it is. They're suggesting that improvements could be made in the chemistry by as much as a factor of 100. Eventually. At that point though, things like electric passenger airplanes become a possibility, much less electric cars.
I'd also hate to think what would happen if that energy were accidentally released all at once. :shock:
Well we've lived for 100+ years with the possibility of, and regular occurrence of, fuel air mix explosions. So probably, too, we will learn to live with that one.

Polonium: You likely mean plutonium? That's what's used in RTEGs. This is something that would be made in breeder reactors, as it is not something that is mined. That's probably Department of Energy territory.
http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/6 ... attery.htm

http://www.gizmag.com/nasa-cancels-adva ... tor/29880/

Sorry yes you are quite right. AFAIK as I know there is no current manufacturing going on of that isotope. Breeder reactors are essentially a dead issue. I can't think of anyone who has a breeder reactor programme going? Although the article does say Oak Ridges TN is again producing the isotope (about 3 lbs pa, a probe uses c 10 lbs).

There is also a shortage of radioactives for medical purposes. The Canadians are shutting down Chalk River* (the one where Lieut. James Earl Carter, USN, visited during the cleanup of an earlier accident). I don't know if any other country is stepping into the breach?
Either way, oil is a very specific sector to trade in, and that does definitely go against the idea of riding the entire market average.
Maybe use some play money for it that you wouldn't mind losing? Just as a hobby sort of thing. That can get tempting though to start dumping more money into oil during the bull markets, and then portfolio risk starts climbing.
I quite agree. Since commodity futures are on margin, it is quite possible to lose more than your original investment, AFAIK. You also are very vulnerable to people who are smarter than you are and have greater resources.

* I may mean Douglas Point-- my expert on this subject has stopped returning my phone calls ;-).
Last edited by Valuethinker on Fri Oct 24, 2014 10:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Valuethinker »

Tanelorn wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:
Jeff7 wrote:Lockheed Martin's new fusion reactor thing pans out, oil might not even do well. ;)
I don't know if I can place adequate emphasis on the "if" in that sentence though.
I am surprised they went live with that. Because if they have done it, it's as important to National Security, potentially, as the development of the hydrogen bomb. A fusion reactor that small would also be a great bomb-making plant.
If it were easy to make a fusion reactor keep going long enough to be a weapon, we would have fusion power plants instead of decades of engineering efforts and nothing yet practical.
Note the precondition. If Lockheed Martin have made a real breakthru, I said, then it's got National Security implications. You are assuming, implicitly, that they have not.
The waste products of typical deuterium/tritium fusion are helium (which we could use more of anyway) and whatever the stray neutrons hits in the reactor. A bunch of radioactive concrete and steel isn't ideal, but it's less effective as a weapon than a club.
And if we wrapped the fusion chamber in uranium? Don't we then have a nice bomb material making factory? And we could do this in a trailer, says L-M.

I accept that the engineering of turning *that* into a bomb is not so simple. But there have been enough leaks, spying, and enough people have done it, that it can't be outside the resources of even a relatively small power that has access to skilled people and can buy the equipment on the global market. Pakistan managed it, North Korea managed it, Israel managed it. All of those countries were 'underdeveloped' when they did it and only Israel had very significant help from an outside power (France).

This makes your potential nuclear club go from 20-30 states to maybe 50-100+?
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by tadamsmar »

Valuethinker wrote:Breeder reactors are essentially a dead issue. I can't think of anyone who has a breeder reactor programme going? Although the article does say Oak Ridges TN is again producing the isotope (about 3 lbs pa, a probe uses c 10 lbs).
Russia has a big breeder reactor program. This from a few months ago:
Russia bets its energy future on waste-free fast breeder nuclear reactors

Russian engineers began a fission reaction at the BN-800 fast breeder nuclear reactor in the Urals last week, marking the beginning of what the government hopes will be a new era of nuclear power for the country.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1860 ... r-reactors

From closer to home:
As of 2013, The UK has shown interest in the PRISM reactor and is working in concert with France to develop ASTRID.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#UK

China started electricity production with a breeder in 2011.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by Valuethinker »

tadamsmar wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:Breeder reactors are essentially a dead issue. I can't think of anyone who has a breeder reactor programme going? Although the article does say Oak Ridges TN is again producing the isotope (about 3 lbs pa, a probe uses c 10 lbs).
Russia has a big breeder reactor program. This from a few months ago:
Russia bets its energy future on waste-free fast breeder nuclear reactors

Russian engineers began a fission reaction at the BN-800 fast breeder nuclear reactor in the Urals last week, marking the beginning of what the government hopes will be a new era of nuclear power for the country.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1860 ... r-reactors
I will wait with some scepticism. In that, no one has ever built a safe and economic breeder reactor. Actual performance in use was very disappointing.


From closer to home:
As of 2013, The UK has shown interest in the PRISM reactor and is working in concert with France to develop ASTRID.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#UK[/quote]

AFAIK the UK has no significant breeder reactor programme. It is a dead issue.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/are_fast-b ... acea/2557/

Pearce (a fan) admits the head of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is against it-- BTW David Mackay has left DECC (where he was Chief Scientific Adviser: his book 'Sustainable Energy: without the Hot Air' is available free on line and is a classic). There is not the budgetary resource to build this. Not in this fiscal environment (which the opposition party, Labour, has admitted they will sustain). The current decommissioning budget is c. £100bn (spent over many years) and has been rising-- no one is going to go near that. Our electricity industry is fully privatized, there is no government-funded capability to build reactors (we have agreed a 25 year subsidy with EDF to build our first new reactors in 30 years).

https://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publicati ... e-2010.pdf from the sceptics.

http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr08.pdf there's the latest study: haven't had time to read the Russian chapter.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Curre ... -Reactors/ is more bullish.

I do not know what the Chinese and the Russians will get up to. I will say this, the Japanese, British and Americans (and in fact the French) will not go there due to cost issues, fiscal stringency and past history. It may at some point be necessary to burn up old reactor radioactive waste, but that decision if it comes, will be a long time coming.
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Re: How to buy oil in the stock market?

Post by LadyGeek »

This thread has run its course and is locked (gone off-topic to discuss nuclear physics).
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