Everything You Need To Know About Crude Oil Trading In India - Part 2

In continuation with the previous article, we discuss more about the opportunities available in trading crude oil in the commodities market. Demand for crude oil is lower for immediate delivery than for delivery in the future. Investors don't want fast delivery because it's hard to get oil to where it needs to go. Because of this, end users and investors often choose futures contracts. By entering a commodities futures contract, a trader promises to buy or sell a certain amount of crude oil at a certain price on a certain date. An example is the best way to understand the idea of trading in commodities. Example 1: Buying and selling goods to protect against risk Let's say you're a farmer who grows wheat and sells it for 500 rupees per quintal on the market. You make a good profit. Since you have a lot of rice to sell, you need to make sure you won't lose money if the price of wheat drops quickly. To protect yourself from losing money, you can buy a futures contract to sell the wheat at Rs. 500 per quintal at a later date. This is known as "hedging." Example 2: Trading goods for the sake of speculation Let's say, for now, that you are a trader who wants to trade crude oil futures. You are optimistic about crude oil (meaning you think that crude oil prices will increase in the future). A futures contract for crude oil has 100 barrels and costs Rs. 3,00,000 (Rs. 3,000 per barrel), but you don't have to pay the full amount to buy it. There must be a 5% margin, which costs Rs. 15,000. Think about a rise in the price of crude oil to Rs. 3,500 per barrel. In this case, if you spend Rs. 3,000, you might make Rs. 500 per barrel and Rs. 50000 in total. As a result, trading commodities gives traders a lot of power. The commodities market is another place where it might be profitable for crude oil prices to go down around the world. For example, if you bought an oil futures contract on December 1 with a strike price of Rs. 4520, the price of a barrel of oil dropped to Rs. 4500 But if the sale was for 10,000 barrels, you could still sell the futures for Rs. 4520 and make a profit of Rs. 100 per barrel, or a net profit of Rs. 10 lakh (10,000 barrels x 100). In order to trade oil futures, a trader must find the right exchange for the oil benchmark he or she wants to use. Oil benchmarks:The benchmark price for crude oil is used by both buyers and sellers as a standard. The three most important oil benchmarks around the world are the West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the Brent Blend, and the Dubai Crude. Exchanges: In India, oil futures are traded at the Multi Commodity Exchange, which is also known as MCX. On the MCX, crude oil is one of the commodities that is traded the most. 8500 barrels of oil, worth Rs 3000 crores, are often traded on the exchange every day. In FY19, close to 32% of the MCX's over Rs. 66 lakh crores in income came from crude oil. Every day, crude oil futures worth more than Rs. 3,000 crore are traded on the MCX. On the MCX, there are two kinds of crude oil futures: Brent crude (Main) - 100 barrels Brent crude (Mini) - 10 barrels Crude oil micro is more popular among dealers because the lot sizes are smaller and the required margin is lower. Can an individual investor buy and sell oil futures? There's no question that you only need a small amount of money to start, and the higher leverage gives you the best chance of making more money. But oil futures are not only easy to buy and sell, but they are also very volatile, which makes it hard to guess how prices will change. If your broker works with commodities and is connected to the MCX or NCDEX, you can talk to them about trading crude oil futures. It's better to start out trading with professionals and then gradually go it alone. To get started with trading with crude, open your demat account with Zebu today.