UKH

If I buy crude oil futures and do nothing what happens? Does a lorry appear eventually with them to deliver? 

The USA will invade you and stick a flag in your back garden.

Pretty much, yes.  You're entering a legal contract to buy something at a certain price on a certain date.  When that date arrives you need to pay the money and the goods become yours.  If you're asking the question, it might be that this area of speculation is a little high risk just yet.

It was more curiosity.  I may go for pork bellies instead

You need to go for 'options'. Then you have the option of taking delivery or not. If they go up, you can sell them. If they go down, you only loose your stake.

This https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery bounces around the IT world from time to time.

Not sure how based in fact it is but is entertaining.

Not necessarily. Many futures contracts are CFDs (contracts for difference) which means you never buy the underlying asset, you simply pay or receive the difference in price between the spot value and the agreed contract level when the maturity date arrives.

So if I actually do want some barrels of oil, buying them is a different process?

In reality if you do get to the delivery phase of a future you would most likely have the crude oil stored in a large facility which you would pay rent for.

I remember this one and I still wish they'd worked a lot harder on the storytelling and the cringeworthy dialogue!

I’d go for frozen concentrated orange juice futures.

I wouldn't try to anticipate demand for commodities. I'd just buy shares in high-quality beaten-up cyclical companies, banks, insurance companies, aeroplane and capital goods manufacturers, furniture and clothing retailers, hotel chains etc and wait for a recovery. As an example, JD Sports is the best-performing stock of the past 10 years on the London Stock Exchange. After all, who doesn't own multiple pairs of trainers? Or rather it was. It lost two thirds, yes two thirds, of its valuation in less than a month. It has bounced a good deal since then but it may test the lows again.

Before CV-19 the world had been moving out of a tricky couple of years into a growth phase, and the data in January backs that up, so I actually already owned a few of the above anticipating good gains. That isn't exactly how it worked out but I'd be a buyer over the next few months.

It is. I hope you realise that;

a) oil trades tend to be at, er, quite a high value.

b) you really need a refinery on stand by. Crude isn't very useful without one.

c) It doesn't actually come in a barrel.

So you wouldn’t recommend pork bellies then?

This week I’m taking my investment tips from a different movie -  youtube.com/watch?v=qsMc-IswG3w&

Edit:  I have been wondering about piling in to the sort of firms you list, but then I though I could go out gardening instead; although the crash in Tesla stock does keep niggling at me...  

Yes, its very odd how some stocks hve been performing and i think JD is a prime example; sports wear eqpt has been selling very well of late; there was a little article on the beeb about a supplier somewhere who had sold 10x the number of table tennis tables he normally does - great except that the french and spanish manufacturers have all closed their facilities.....if anyone, JD should continue to perform well...

Possibly the target market you're anticipating might not be in a mood to actually pay for it, when the time comes to be needing it

Bitcoin still seems to be the thing , I get two emails a day telling me how much Bear Grylls has made, what could possibly go wrong .

No idea about futures, but I've filled my heating oil tank to the brim to take advantage of the drop in oil prices.

I'm going to set you some homework...  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086465/

Wait until they start paying you to take oil off their hands (proposed as a sane possibility for oil shale extraction on news today...)

You've already got one

😠

Been a while since I saw that - I was thinking you were referring to something different:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/