I've never done any options trading or futures, or anything outside of the simple world of going short or going long with a block of shares. I'm really interested in commodities though. What I'd like to do is continue the same short/long game, but trade the oil prices instead. Point me in the right direction, where should I get started? Is there a stock that mimics the movement of oil prices that I could trade? Help me out! Thanks everyone
Thanks Futures look very interesting. Thats what I'd really like to get into, but I don't have the slightest clue about them. If April Crude is sitting at a price of $60 and I think it's going to go up, can I just buy in at that price with a long position and then sell when it hits $64? or is it more complicated than that? I'm soooo stuck in my own little world of trading the NASDAQ that I have no idea how anything else out there works. I'm hopeless. My biggest problem is the dates associated with everything. Why isn't there just a single price for crude and it goes up and down. What's with all these time complications? HAHA
I only trade ES, maybe some oil experts will chime in. You may want to try trading OIH, or the options of it before trading futures.
Like I mentioned in the first post, I've never touched options either. So I don't know exactly how they differ from what I'm doing now. OIH looks pretty good, and it seems to follow the oil futures chart closely. I guess it's just weird though to look at it priced at $140 a share, when I'm used to watching oil move around between $60 and $70. Not that it makes much difference, but it's just not the same...haha...you know what I mean? Anyway, thanks...you've been a help. I think what I need right now is to find some info on options and futures and the commodities market. That way I'll at least have some idea of what people are talking about.
Right....I actually did know that. But what's the point of having an expiration date on a price? Why can't the price just continue on indefinitely? Also, why purchase a contract that's dated 4 months in advance and doesn't have any relevance to what the current price action is? Or even the opposite...why buy a contract that you want to hold, just for it to expire in a month?.....These must be incredibly dumb questions...haha. Sincerely, "The laughing stock of ET"
It is futures contract, they always have expiration dates. What are you wanting to hold for like years ? You can buy leap optionson OIH that expire in jan 2008. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=OIH&m=2008-01
Bigmark, Pay a visit to CME, CBOE, NYMEX, CBOT and other derivatives exchanges' websites. There's plenty of info there.
HAHAHA...no no...I was just saying that I don't get the point of having time limits. I certainly wouldn't be holding anything for years, maybe a week at the most. The way the oil moves I was thinking more like a couple days at a time. Anyway, I need to sleep. Hopefully I'll wake up in the morning to a whole slew of helpful posts from all kinds of forum dwellers ...hint hint.