As an avid investor and spread better, I tend to spend way too long starting at screens for the next competitive edge to turn a profit. While there are a ton of investment opportunities to look at from currencies to commodities – it is the Crude market that has peaked my interest recently and fortunately as a mainstream investment choice, there are plenty of trading and spread betting brokers willing to take your bet.
Since the 2014 highs of over $100 a barrel, the commodity has seemed on a one-way destructive path to sink to as low as it possibly could. With a huge surplus of oil forming, Iran recently being re-granted permission to export and many of the Middle Eastern countries unwilling to cut production lines, a drop to January’s sub-$27 level seemed inevitable. While OPEC has been a little more attentive recently in trying to structure new supply cut deals, prices have been volatile with typically small issues causing large scale price rises and falls, like the recent Kuwait strike action and subsequent cancellation.
With the price now sitting around the $43 mark, investors seem divided whether the commodity will climb back to the $60 a barrel mark earlier predicted, or whether continued refusals to cut supply enough will lead to another bottoming-out down to the sub-$30 level again. Whatever the scenario, the spread betting and intraday trading patterns for the last few days are rife with opportunity for those willing to be patient enough to wait for the right moment. While with any trading, there is an inherent degree of risk associated with any bet made, the ability to correlate price changes through the Kuwait scenario were fairly straight-forward and previous major fluctuations in the value can easily be matched with news events.
So what next? Well for those of you who already have a spread betting account or favourite trading site, keep an eye on Google News and social for any latest reports that could yield a spike or drop in the price and it would be wise to keep an intraday price report for Crude/Brent Oil open on another screen or in another tab. If you haven’t yet dabbled in it before, most of the major sites will feature an education section that give you the breakdown on how to start spread betting and even offer a lucrative bonus before you begin. It’s also wise to have a look at our previous article on Oil to understand a bit more about the market itself before you begin. Best of luck!
