Is there a way to buy raw oil today and sell it in 1 year time?
There are many ways of investing either directly or indirectly in oil: all of these options are ways to invest in an expected change in the price of oil at various degrees of directness and risk profiles. Investing in derivative or derivative-like products such as futures and CFDs is very risky and requires a good degree of sophisticated knowledge to manage. Unless you have the storage and transportation facilities for it, or can come up with the money needed to rent or build those, no -- or not in any significant quantity.  Buying oil futures is essentially an on-paper version of the same bet. Futures prices are already taking into account both expectations about price changes and the fact that there's cash tied up until they come due, but storage costs also adjust to follow those expectations. You can buy the exchange traded fund ETFS WTI Crude Oil (CRUD), amongst other ETFS products. http://funds.ft.com/uk/Tearsheet/Summary?s=CRUD:LSE:USD Note these funds do not 'jump' when the crude oil futures contracts are in contango (e.g. June contract is priced higher than May) and the futures roll-over, as they do monthly.  When this happens the EFTS continues with no movement.  Currently May is $52.85 and June is $54.15 (so in contango).  LSE:CRUD is $13.40 and if the crude oil futures rolled-over it would carry straight on at that value.  For this reason one should be cautious buying and holding LSE:CRUD longterm.
Generally speaking, you want to find goods and services that are inelastic and also require oil as a cost. Oil company stocks make record profits when oil is high, because direct demand for oil is relatively inelastic. Profit margins of oil competition should also go up, as this creates inflation in general, as people seek alternatives to the inelastic demand. It depends on the broker. The one I use (Fidelity) will allow me to buy then sell or sell then buy within 3 days even though the cash isn't settled from the first transaction. But they won't let me buy then sell then buy again with unsettled cash. Of course not waiting for cash to settle makes you vulnerable to a good faith violation. So the easy to extract petroleum products are diminishing in supply and the petroleum extraction companies have to expend more capitol to get the commodities they sell on an open market and that's hurting their profit margin?  Who could have ever envisioned such a situation? "What you're looking for are either FX Forwards or FX Futures.   These products are traded differently but they are basically the same thing -- agreements to deliver currency at a defined exchange rate at a future time.   Almost every large venue or bank will transact forwards, when the counterparty (you or your broker) has sufficient trust and credit for the settlement risk, but the typical duration is less than a year though some will do a single-digit multi-year forward on a custom basis.  Then again, all forwards are considered custom contracts.  You'll also need to know that forwards are done on currency pairs, so you'll need to pick the currency to pair your NOK against.  Most likely you'll want EUR/NOK simply for the larger liquidity of that pair over other possible pairs. A quote on a forward will usually just be known by the standard currency pair ticker with a settlement date different from spot.  E.g. ""EUR/NOK 12M"" for the 12 month settlement. Futures, on the other hand, are exchange traded and more standardized.  The vast majority through the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange).  Your broker will need access to one of these exchanges and you simply need to ""qualify"" for futures trading (process depends on your broker).  Futures generally have highest liquidity for the next ""IMM"" expiration (quarterly expiration on well known standard dates), but I believe they're defined for more years out than forwards.   At one FX desk I've knowledge of, they had 6 years worth of quarterly expirations in their system at any one time.  Futures are generally known by a ticker composed of a ""globex"" or ""cme"" code for the currency concatenated with another code representing the expiration.  For example, ""NOKH6"" is 'NOK' for Norwegian Krone, 'H' for March, and '6' for the nearest future date's year that ends in '6' (i.e. 2016).   Note that you'll be legally liable to deliver the contracted size of Krone if you hold through expiration!  So the common trade is to hold the future, and net out just before expiration when the price more accurately reflects the current spot market." "You don't need to use a real stock like GLD.  You can just create a ""stock"" called something like ""1 oz Gold"" and buy and sell them as if they were shares.  It won't auto-update the price like GLD, but that's not a big deal to update manually once a month or so. I prefer to have accurate data that is correct at a particular point in time to having data that is 2-3% off, or that requires entering the ounces as 10x reality.  YMMV. This is very similar to how you track US Savings Bonds in Quicken (and might be described in the help under that topic.)" "In India the Short is what is called in other markets call as ""Naked Short"" [I think I got the right term]. It means that you can only short sell intra day and by the end of the day you have to buy back the shares [at whatever price, if you don't; the exchange will do it by force the next day]. In other markets the Intra day shorts are not allowed and one can short for several days by borrowing shares from someone else [arranged by broker] India has a futures market, so you can sell/buy something today with the execution date of one month. This is typically a fixed day of the month [I think last Thursday]" No, you cannot.  The cash settlement period will lock up your cash depending on the product you trade. Three business days for stocks, 1 business day for options, and you would need waaaaaay more than $5,000 to trade futures. any business selling for only 1,000 will not be worth getting into. marketing alone should cost you more than that if you have any genuine hope of turning a profit. buy some books instead. work for someone, learn the ropes, read books, practice what you read at work, then start something with your savings in 5 years. after 10 years, I don't see how you could end up buying from a little shop. I know people much less experienced than him that don't do that...   It's difficult but even someone with 1 year of experience here in China wouldn't do that how does the trading company know which one I want to sell? It doesn't need to know. You just sell one. From taxation point of view depending on the country / tax jurisdiction, it can be only be FIFO or specific stock. No. Supply takes 5yrs to come on line from planting to harvesting. The issue on the supply side has been twofold: 1) vanilla bean prices have been falling for some time so many farmers switched to other crops, 2) 50%+ of all vanilla bean is grown in Madasgar, which experienced a typhoon, which damaged a bunch of the existing crop. On the demand side, people are switching from artificial flavoring to more natural ingredients, which actually taste much better too.    So, there's a significant demand/supply imbalance which will utilitmately correct but it could take a long time to do so.   My problem is figuring out a viable shorting mechanism as the commodity is not publicly traded and the timeframe is long "In layman's terms, oil on the commodities market has a ""spot price"" and a ""future price"". The spot price is what the last guy paid to buy a barrel of oil right now (and thus a pretty good indicator of what you'll have to pay). The futures price is what the last guy paid for a ""futures contract"", where they agreed to buy a barrel of oil for $X at some point in the future. Futures contracts are a form of hedging; a futures contract is usually sold at a price somewhere between the current spot price and the true expected future spot price; the buyer saves money versus paying the spot price, while the seller still makes a profit. But, the buyer of a futures contract is basically betting that the spot price as of delivery will be higher, while the seller is betting it will be lower. Futures contracts are available for a wide variety of acceptable future dates, and form a curve when plotted on a graph that will trend in one direction or the other. Now, as Chad said, oil companies basically get their cut no matter what. Oil stocks are generally a good long-term bet. As far as the best short-term time to buy in to an oil stock, look for very short windows when the spot and near-future price of gasoline is trending downward but oil is still on the uptick. During those times, the oil companies are paying their existing (high) contracts for oil, but when the spot price is low it affects futures prices, which will affect the oil companies' margins. Day traders will see that, squawk ""the sky is falling"" and sell off, driving the price down temporarily. That's when you buy in. Pretty much the only other time an oil stock is a guaranteed win is when the entire market takes a swan dive and then bottoms out. Oil has such a built-in demand, for the foreseeable future, that regardless of how bad it gets you WILL make money on an oil stock. So, when the entire market's in a panic and everyone's heading for gold, T-debt etc, buy the major oil stocks across the spectrum. Even if one stock tanks, chances are really good that another company will see that and offer a buyout, jacking the bought company's stock (which you then sell and reinvest the cash into the buying company, which will have taken a hit on the news due to the huge drop in working capital). Of course, the one thing to watch for in the headlines is any news that renewables have become much more attractive than oil. You wait; in the next few decades some enterprising individual will invent a super-efficient solar cell that provides all the power a real, practical car will ever need, and that is simultaneously integrated into wind farms making oil/gas plants passe. When that happens oil will be a thing of the past." Probably the easiest way for individual investors is oil ETFs.  In particular, USO seems to be fairly liquid and available.  You should check carefully the bid/ask spreads in this volatile time.  There are other oil ETFs and leveraged and inverse oil ETFs exist as well, but one should heed the warnings about leveraged ETFs. Oil futures are another possibility though they can be more complicated and tough to access for an individual investor.  Note that futures have a drift associated with them as well.  Be careful close or roll any positions before delivery, of course, unless you have a need for a bunch of actual barrels of oil. Finally, you can consider investing in commodities ETFs or Energy stocks or stock ETFs that are strongly related to the price of oil.  As Keshlam mentions, care is advised in all these methods.  Many people thought oil reached its bottom a few weeks back then OPEC decided to do nothing and the price dropped even further. "You might consider working on getting your new employer to sponsor a 401k, there may be options where you can invest and they aren't required to add anything as a match (which gives you higher limits). If they don't match, they may just be liable for some administration fees. If you have any side business that you do, you might also be eligible for other ""self-employed"" options that have higher limits (SEP, Simple - I think they may go up to $15k) although, I'm not sure the nitty gritties of them." I shorted at 1.35 recently, I was short from 1.39 and closed at 1.33  There are two collapse scenarios scenarios:  1. Euro collapse all countries revert (very unlikely) eur/usd = 0  2. Euro zone kicks out the PIIGS, eurusd =1.5, the currency now has only the strong countries in it which will reduce all of the eurozone risk.   Scenario two will kill you if you are short.  Short the currency and leverage it up (in fx you can usually get 50:1 leverage).