Oil contracts sold on NYMEX can be settled through physical delivery (the oil is delivered to a hub in Cushing, Oklahoma) or settled through cash, which is usually what happens.
Not exact matches
If the
oil traders are right, they can make money by buying
oil at today's spot price,
selling a futures
contract for delivery at the higher price expected in the future and storing the
oil in the meantime.
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oil; the effect of competition, on both revenue and gross margins; difficulties associated with rapid technological changes in our markets; risks associated with unpredictable sales cycles; our dependence on
contract manufacturers and sole or limited source suppliers; and the effect on our business of natural disasters.
So, in order to hedge against that risk, a supplier of
oil may wish to gain some insulation from the price swings inherent to
oil and
sell a futures
contract.
The initial shipping
contracts were signed when
oil sold for nearly $ US 90 a barrel.
If you fall into the former category then in all candor your best play is probably to
sell short crude
oil futures
contracts as they offer the most direct play on a bearish scenario for crude
oil.
NYMEX crude
oil is the largest
oil futures
contract in the world and has a current total open interest of around 1.6 million
contracts and it would be impossible for any group of speculators to
sell or buy 53 days of world production in a year or longer, no less in a week as just occurred in COMEX silver.
It meant that if someone could buy physical
oil and store it cheaply they could make a risk - free annualised return of almost 40 % by simultaneously
selling July futures
contracts.
For example, if a large speculator who was very bullish on
oil bid - up the price of the December - 2016
oil contract from $ 64 to $ 70, it would create an opportunity for other traders to lock - in a profit by purchasing physical
oil and
selling the December - 2016 futures with the aim of delivering the
oil into the
contracts late next year.
All
oil contracts are
sold in U.S. dollars.
For another example, if a large speculator who was very bearish on
oil aggressively short -
sold the December - 2016
oil contract, driving its price down from $ 64 to $ 60, it would create an opportunity for other traders to lock - in a profit by
selling physical
oil and buying the December - 2016 futures with the aim of eventually replacing what they had
sold by exercising the futures
contracts.
While the market benchmark remains West Texas Intermediate crude delivered in Cushing, Oklahoma, there has been a surge in trading of futures
contracts tracking the price differences between WTI and
oil sold in Gulf Coast ports like Houston and the Permian shale fields near Midland, Texas.
Intended for advanced investors only,
oil futures
contracts entitle you to buy and
sell options to purchase or
sell oil (and hopefully profit) based on your predictions of where the market is going.
If this were true then people would buy
oil contracts in the summer time allowing them to
sell the
oil in the winter causing the opportunity to make a quick buck with
oil to almost instantaneously equalize.
If WTI crude
oil is trading on the spot market for $ 60 and the futures
contract expiring two years hence is trading at $ 50, an arbitrage opportunity could exist where one
sells the $ 60 spot amount and goes long the $ 50 two - year forward price.
The Businessweek article provides a wonderful illustration: In May 2010, ETFs
sold June
contracts of crude
oil at an average price of $ 75.67 and rolled into July
contracts at an average price of $ 79.68.
Let us say, for example, that a forward
oil contract for twelve months in the future is
selling for $ 100 today, while today's spot price is $ 75.
They
sell a futures
contract for that
oil down the road.
In our example, let us assume that Shell
Oil would like to create a futures contract to sell 25,000 barrels of o
Oil would like to create a futures
contract to
sell 25,000 barrels of
oiloil.