Take advantage of rock bottom oil prices
"As others have alluded to but haven't said due to the lack of reputation points to spare, you can take advantage of oil prices by leveraging up and using as much credit and margin as the banks and brokerages (respectively) will lend you. People assume that the correct answer on this forum has to masquerade as conservative financial advice, and this is not advice nor conservative. Futures contracts are readily available, but they are expensive to obtain (like a minimum entry of $4,450). But if this expense is no such object to you then you can then obtain this contract which is actually worth 20x that and experience the price appreciation and depreciation of the whole contract. The concept is similar to a downpayment on a mortgage. You assume ""rock bottom"" oil prices, but fortunately for you, futures contracts will allow you to quickly change your bets from future price appreciation and allow you to speculate on future price depreciation. So although the union workers will be protesting full time after the drilling company lays them off, you will still be getting wealthier. Long Options. These are the best. The difference with options, amongst other speculation products, is that options require the least amount of capital risk for the greatest reward. With futures, or with trading shares of an ETF (especially on margin), you have to put up a lot of capital, and if the market does not go your desired direction, then will lose a lot. And on margin products you can lose more than you put in. Being long options does not come with these dilemmas. A long march 2015 call option on USO ETF can currently be bought for less than $200 of actual cash (ie. the trading quote will be less than $2.00, but this will cost you less than $200), and will be worth $1000 on a very modest rebound in prices. The most you can lose is the $200 for the contract. Compared to $4450 on the futures, or $100,000 (that you don't have) in the futures market if oil really moves against you, or compared to whatever large amount of cash needed to actually buy shares of an ETF needed to make any decent return. These are the most lucrative (and fun and exhilarating and ) ways to take advantage of rock bottom oil prices, as an individual." 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. A long call options spread. In this case, a bet that the USO ETF would recover to $35. You can see, I got in when USO was $28, and it's continued to drop, but it has till Jan '17 to recover. The spread is set up to give leverage, when I entered the trade, a 50% recovery would result in a 200% gain, or 3X my bet. An option spread can be bought using any two strikes, and with different payouts depending on how far out of the money the strikes are. "I'm really surprised more people didn't recommend UGA or USO specifically.  These have been mentioned in the past on a myriad of sites as ways to hedge against rising prices.  I'm sure they would work quite well as an investment opportunity.  They are ETF's that invest in nearby futures and constantly roll the position to the next delivery date.  This creates a higher than usual expense ratio, I believe, but it could still be a good investment.  However, be forewarned that they make you a ""partner"" by buying the stock so it can mildly complicate your tax return." I would suggest that oil stocks are going down due to reduced earnings predictions.  The market may go too far in selling off oil and oil-related stocks.  You may be able to pick up a bargain, but beware that prices may continue to fall in the short to medium term.
I think this thread got a bit off topic.  The point is that we've decided as a nation that we want to guarantee a basic level of healthcare, as established by government programs.  Companies like wal-mart take advantage of that, paying low wages and assuming employees will utilize the government assistance.  The take-away, is that that's a little goofy and we should just fix our fucking healthcare system.  As for wal-mart.  It's complicated.  They've accomplished huge gains in efficiency, arguably accomplishing more for the environment than any other company, not to mention their moves towards sustainable fish/etc.  At the same time, the lawsuit alleging gender discrimination seemed not without merit, the folks in charge are occasionally aggressively socially conservative, and their march to the bottom for prices has induced quality suppliers to provide lower quality products specifically to be sold in wal-mart, corrupting their brand-name and commoddifying[sic] their products after being suckered in by the big sales numbers. "Completely false. I recognize the impact that energy has on everyday life across the globe. Your reasoning is fundamentally flawed because you think oil or ""oil lust"" is the reason. The desire for cheaper energy is the driving factor, it just so happens that oil is the cheapest. If the roles were reversed and solar was more profitable, there would be the exact same counter movement in support of oil. You don't understand the rules of the game and that's why you're willing to throw billions of other people's dollars at the problem to change the rules to fit your desires.   And you can prove me wrong right now for calling you an uniformed ideologue by just saying, ""it's about being as efficient as possible to produce the most energy for people to live their lives. No one person or industry should have an advantage over someone else; therefore all energy subsidies should be eliminated in the interest of progress."" But you won't." Perhaps you have heard of 'The Paris Accord'. No? Shame. The entire rest of the world signed on to it. So, yay 'murica and all but the rest of the world is dropping dollars on that big time.   Norway banned oil heating in all homes and businesses. 100,000 homes and business have 2 years to scrap their oil heating systems. 2 years! Germany completely banned the sale of internal combustion engines by 2030, India 2031, Norway, 2025, china wants 60% of the whole fleet to be electric in cities by 2030. Canada is raising their carbon taxes even higher, BC alone is set to $40mil on public car chargers this year and that is just the public money.   The rest of the world is moving and America is being left behind. 10 gigafactory sized battery plants are currently under construction and battery prices have been dropping by 30% per kwh per year every year. Power storage is expected to be the next semiconductor race for costs.  Like smartphones, this is the next tech boom and reading what is going on the industry right now is staggering. They are ramping up battery production like no time seen in recent history.  Oil prices are as much a function of speculation into the future as right now. The entire industry is slashing investment because they know that in a few short years it will become a shrink industry and that is not good for the bottom line. Saudi Arabia and most oil countries with 'cheap easy oil' are now vested in pumping as much oil as they can in the next decade. Leaders have quoted as saying 'what we don't pump in the next 10-15 years will never be pumped'.  The race is now on to pump cheap oil fast because these guys have driven tesla P85D's and they know what's up. Prices will continue to stay low because they want to crush the competition and be the last to sell oil. Holding on to their vast reserves is now bad for business where as before it was waiting for higher prices when you close the tap. "Wow.  Just ... wow. We all must start where we are, I guess.  The past is the past. There almost certainly isn't a cheap way to fix this.  You're already on the hook for $4k per month.  Your money is enabling her behavior.  You'd rather not enable her behavior, but the money is part of the consequences of your divorce, so into her bank account it goes. Those who control how much alimony your ex-wife receives might reach the conclusion she needs more.  That's not a hard conclusion for them to make.  It's not their money. The living conditions are hurting your kids, and that's unfortunate, but that's also part of the consequences of your divorce. If it's deemed that your kids are better off not visiting her, then you might be relieved of paying child support (since you're supporting them at that point) but you might still be supporting her until some trigger is met, which might be never.  (You know those details better than I do, of course.) If she's already lost her house, filed for bankruptcy, borrowed money from people that she hasn't paid back, and gets a check from you each month and still has utilities shut off, she'll continue to deteriorate financially until she hits rock bottom.  Then, and only then, will she see the need to fix her behavior. Now, the (possibly) million dollar question for you is, ""Where is rock bottom?"" Do what you can to make that happen sooner rather than later, because you'll likely be subsidizing her all the way down, and part of the way back up.  You've lost most of the leverage you once had to change her behavior, but try every way you can.  You might hit the jackpot." "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN19I0G4) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Seven years after its Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, BP is betting tens of billions of dollars on the prospect that it can slash the costs of offshore drilling by half or more - just as shale oil producers have done onshore.  &gt; While BP has some onshore U.S. developments, the firm is notably absent from the industry&amp;#039;s rush into shale oil fields of the West Texas Permian Basin.  &gt; Richard Sears - who served as chief scientist on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling - said such projects can be managed safely at low oil prices.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6jqx7e/seven_years_after_its_deepwater_horizon_explosion/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~153572 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **oil**^#1 **Gulf**^#2 **platform**^#3 **drills**^#4 **new**^#5" At this particular time, I would strongly suggest holding on and not bailing.  I've been following this sector pretty closely for 10+ years now.  It has taken an absolute beating since 2011 (up to 90% down in many areas), and has been in a slow downward grind all year.  Given the cyclical nature of the markets, you're far far closer to a long term bottom, and have a much better risk/reward outlook now vs say, four, or even two years ago.  Personally, I'm planning on jumping into the sector heavily as soon as I see signs of a wash-out, desperation low, where people like yourself start selling in panic and frustration.  I may very likely start cost-averaging into it even now, although I personally feel we may get one more major bottom around the spring 2016 time-frame, coupled with a general market deflation scare, which might surprise many by its severity.  But at the same time, the sector might turn up from here and not look back, since I think many share my view and are just patiently waiting, and with so many buyers waiting in support, it may never crash hard.   In any case, I personally feel that we're approaching the cheap buying opportunity of a lifetime in this sector within the next year (precious metals miners that is, base metals may still falter if the economy is still iffy, and just look at the baltic dry index as an indicator of world trade and productivity... not looking so hot).  If you've suffered this long already, and it is just a small portfolio portion, just keep hanging in there.  And by next summer, if we get a confirmed panic low, and a subsequent strong, high-volume, consistent bounce pattern up past summer 2015 levels, then I'd start adding even more on dips and enjoy the ride. It has a real use and it's not owned by a single individual or company. I think you're over thinking it. The bottom falling out would require people to stop using it. There are a limited number of Bitcoins in existence and as long as there is demand, the value can be extrapolated. 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.