Online Trading Blog

Energy futures market is a liquid yet extremely volatile futures market offering traders opportunities to profit from ever changing oil and gas prices. Energy futures are traded in different markets across the world like London exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).

Energy futures contracts are excellent instruments for traders, speculators and hedgers. They offer all the advantages of standard futures contracts like standardized contacts for quality and quantity, high trading leverage, high risk to return ratio, easy to go short, and choice to cash settle or to own underlying energy commodity.

Different energy futures available in NYMEX and their contract specifications are as follows.

1. Crude Oil: Most liquid energy future. Contract size is 1,000 barrels of Sweet crude oil (crude with lower sulfur levels). The minimum tick size is a penny.
2. Heating Oil: Second largest traded energy futures. Contract size is 42,000 gallons. Minimum tick size is $0.0001/gallon.
3. Unleaded Gas (RBOB): Contact size 42,000 gallons and minimum tick size $0.0001/gallon.
4. Natural Gas: Biggest of all 4 futures contacts. Contract size is 10,000 MM BTUs (British Thermal Units). Minimum tick size $0.001/MM BTU.

The delivery point of underlying energy commodities differ with markets and futures commodities. Remember different markets may have different daily price limits for different energy futures. And also many markets set position limits, which differ for hedgers and speculators.

NobleTrading.com Offers Online Stock Trading, Online Options Trading
Online Futures Trading, Online Forex Trading
Worldwide Brokerage Service, Day Trading Brokerage