Financial Spread Betting is an alternative way to speculate on various financial markets. Many brokers offer bets on a very wide range of instruments including spot forex, oil, gas, tracker funds, stocks and many more. Some brokers also offer bets on Futures and Options contracts too.

Oil is the most widely traded commodity but for the average investor, there are the obvious impracticalities of storing barrels of oil. So how can we invest?

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Option 1 – The Futures Market

Mutual Funds are a very common way of investing. In theory they are a professionally managed investment that is diversified into a range of securities including stocks, bonds and other securities. The person who manages the fund is known as the “Fund Manager” or “Portfolio Manager”. It is the fund managers responsibility to buy securities taking a speculative view that they will appreciate in value.

ETFs or Exchange Traded Funds are open ended investment companies that are designed to track specific markets including global stock indices, commodities and metals. They have massively grown in popularity in recent years partly due to the simplicity of them. Some brokers offer the option to trade these exchange traded funds on margin giving the opportunity for greater gains, but also greater losses. Most Exchange traded funds have the option of going long or short.