How to trade the oil markets?

How to trade the oil markets?
There are several ways to trade and invest in the oil markets oil as a commodity oil ETFs oil and gas industries and shares in the individual companies trading the price of oil is the most common way there are many classifications covering varying degrees of quality and sulfurous content but two benchmarks are widely used brent and us light crude brent is the classification that covers oil that's been produced in Europe since 1976 it was named after the Brent field off the northeastern tip of Scotland which was run by shale and the company that became ExxonMobil us light crude a mixture of oils that come from North America the most prominent being west texas intermediate or WTI the disparity between brands and US light crude has been kept steady over the years with US oil mostly at a small premium to brent but this has been flipped in recent years because of the Libyan crisis in 2011 led to an increase in supply from North America oil ETFs or exchange-traded funds are often used to gain exposure to the oil market unlike buying into a single stock an ETF charges fees which will eat into the overall fund performance the indices are a way to trade a group of similar companies such as oil and gas producers or the equipment service companies and finally company shares themselves selecting which shares can be a complex process as there are different sorts of businesses an upstream companies involved in exploration and production these companies are vulnerable to a drop in the price of oil midstream is processing storing and transportation and downstream concerns itself with refining the crude these companies tend to make more money when the oil price is low the big multinationals are often exposed to all areas that some of the smaller businesses are specialists there are traditional oil companies that drill and recover oil in a conventional way then there are those that employ new technologies like fracking that are also the oilfield service companies that provide and operate the rigs because of the complexity and vast array of options spread betting is often a good way for traders to speculate on crude price volatility without a direct relationship to the underlying asset and so no oil contract to worry about leaving the trader to focus on pure price action but whichever way you choose it's a sector with a wide variety of opportunities

trading oil, oil markets, how to trade oil markets, invest in oil markets, oil prices, oil price, brent oil, US light crude oil, crude oil, midstream, downstream, upstream, fracking, crude price volatility, invest in oil, oil and gas indices, trading, trader, oil ETFs, trading oil ETFs, oil indices, gas indices, oil shares, spread betting, ETFs, commodities, shares, company shares, IG, IG UK, financial trading, forex, stock market