TOCOM oil in USD
TOCOM Crude is a cash-settled blend of Oman and Dubai crude oil, both quoted in USD.  The daily settlement price is mark to market, but the final settlement price is based on reported prices from Dubai and Oman (or calculated in some cases with a known procedure), averaged and then converted to Yen using monthly average exchange rates as published by a reference bank (see Detailed Rules) You're trying to go all the way back and unfuddle quotes into a blend of USD-quoted oils.  The correct procedure here would be to go with the Oman and Dubai prices in the first place (unless you're trying to arbitrage the TOCOM market). As to why they do it this way?  It's a service.  TOCOM takes on all the challenges to provide customers with a steady and consistent way of trading cash-oil.  For physical oil, all you'd have to do is buy the blend on Dubai's and Oman's spot market.  You trust TOCOM's price finding process, i.e. there will be no discrepancies between your TOCOM cash-oil and the Middle East physical oil. Edit: As to why Japan isn't buying WTI directly:  There's a considerable cost of carry.  WTI delivery location is Cushing, OK; there are pipelines but it's still a logistics act to get the oil to a port on the West Coast and then have it shipped to Japan.  Dubai's delivery is at Jebel Ali (Persian Gulf), Omani crude can be shipped straight from Mina Al Fahal.  Not only is it a shorter trip but also there are more shipping companies specialised in oil deliveries to the Asian hotspots. Why they pay in USD?  Persian oil is highly sought after in nearly all of Asia's economies but there's little other exported goods from there.  So naturally the market for currency crosses (AEDJPY, OMRJPY, AEDINR, OMRINR, etc.) is not that liquid.  At least not as liquid as to make buying Persian oil a smooth deal.  Anyway, both Dubai and Oman chose to follow Western practice to quote their contracts in USD and (maybe because of liquidity concerns) also to accept USD for payment only.
It would essentially make goods from other countries more cheaper than goods from US. And it would make imports from these countries to China more expensive.  The below illustration is just with 2 major currencies and is more illustrative to show the effect. It does not actually mean the goods from these countries would be cheaper. 1 GBP = 1.60 USD  1 EUR = 1.40 USD 1 CNY = 0.15 USD Lets say the above are the rates for GBP, EUR, CNY. The cost of a particular goods (assume Pencils) in international market is 2 USD. This means for the cost of manufacturing this should be less than GBP 1.25 in UK, less than 1.43 in Euro Countires, less than 13.33 CNY in China. Only then export would make sense. If the real cost of manufacturing is say 1.4 GBP in UK, 1.5 EUR in Euro countires, clearly they cannot compete and would loose. Now lets say the USD has appreciated by 20% against other currencies. The CNY is at same rate. 1 GBP = 1.28 USD 1 EUR = 1.12 USD 1 CNY = 0.15 USD Now at this rate the cost of manufacturing should be less than GBP 1.56 GBP, less than 1.78 EUR in Euro Countires. In effect this is more than the cost of manufacturing. So in effect the goods from other countires have become cheaper/compatative and goods from China have become expensive. Similarly the imports from these countires to China would be more expensive. "Question 2 Some financial institutions can provide a way to invest small amounts with low or no cost fees over a period of time (like monthly, weekly, etc).  For instance, a few brokerages have a way to buy specific ETFs for no cost (outside of the total expense ratio). Question 3 When someone says that investing is like buying a lottery ticket, they are comparing an event that almost always has at least a 99.9% of no return (large winnings) to an event that has much better odds.  Even if I randomly pick a stock in the S&P 500 and solely invest in it, over the course of a given year, I do not face a 99.9% chance of losing everything. So comparing the stock market to a lottery, unless a specific lottery has much better odds (keep in mind that some of these jackpots have a 99.9999999% of no return) is not the same.  Unfortunately, nothing truly safe exists - risk may mutate, but it's always present; instead, the probability of something being safe and (or) generating a return may be true for a given period of time, while in another given period of time, may become untrue. One may argue that holding cash is safer than buying an index fund (or stock, ETF, mutual fund, etc), and financially that may be true over a given period of time (for instance, the USD beat the SPY for the year of 2008).  Benjamin Franklin, per a biography I'm reading, argued that the stock market was superior to gold (from the context, it sounds like the cash of his day) because of what the stock market represents: essentially you're betting on the economic output of workers.  It's like saying, in an example using oil, that I believe that even though oil becomes a rare resource in the long run, human workers will find an alternative to oil and will lead to better living standards for all of us. Do civilizations like the Mongolian, Roman, and Ottoman empires collapse?  Yes, and would holding the market in those days fail?  Yes.  But cash and gold might be useless too because we would still need someone to exchange goods with and we would need to have the correct resources to do so (if everyone in a city owns gold, gold has little value).  The only ""safe bet"" in those days would be farming skill, land, crops and (or) livestock because even without trading, one could still provide some basic necessities." There is no ETF that closely tracks oil or gasoline. This is because all existing oil and gasoline ETFs hold futures contracts or other derivatives. Storing the oil and gasoline would be prohibitively costly. Futures contracts are prone to contango and backwardation, sometimes resulting in large deviations from the price of the physical commodity. Contrast oil ETFs with metal ETFs, which track nicely. EDIT: See this article about contango. The UNG chart is particularly ugly. If you are planning this as a tax avoidance scheme, well it is not. The gains will be taxable in your hands and not in the Banks hands. Banks simply don't cash out the stock at the same price, there will be quite a bit of both Lawyers and others ... so in the end you will end up paying more. The link indicates that one would pay back the loan via one's own earnings. So if you have a stock worth USD 100, you can pledge this to a Bank and get a max loan of USD 50 [there are regulations that govern the max you can get against 100]. You want to buy something worth USD 50. Option1: Sell half the stock, get USD 50, pay the captial gains tax on USD 50. Option2: Pledge the USD 100 stock to bank, get a loan of USD 50. As you have not sold anything, there is no tax. Over a period pay the USD 50 loan via your own earnings. A high valued customer may be able to get away with a very low rate of intrest and very long repayment period.   The tax implication to your legal hier would be from the time the stock come to his/her hands to the time she sold. So if the price increase to 150 by the time Mark dies, and its sold at 160 later, the gain is only of USD 10. So rather than paying 30% or whatever the applicable tax rate, it would be wise to pay an interest of few percentages. Quite a few stock broker in India offer to trade in US markets via tie-up brokers in US. As an Indian citizen, there are limits as to how much FX you can buy, generally very large, should be an issue. The profits will be taxed in US as well as India [you can claim relief under DTAA] Well i'm not saying it will be terrible, i could have said this wrong but it might be terrible. Dollar is not the international currency just in oil but mostly everything. Different countries uses dollar to trade, this is one of the core reasons of US economy being the strongest. US should not be tolerant about this sort of stuff since if this trend continuous it could be disastrous. "There are firms that let you do this. I believe that Saxo Bank is one such firm (note that I'm not endorsing the company at all, and have no experience with it) Keep in mind that the reason that these currencies are ""exotic"" is because the markets for trading are small. Small markets are generally really bad for retail/non-professional investors.  (Also note: I'm not trying to insult Brazil or Thailand, which are major economies. In this context, I'm specifically concerned with currency trading volume.)" It is beyond US. US is simply not a large enough global player to try to regulate everything. The world will simply bypass US and remove it from global supply chain.  Syngenta, Chemchina, Bayer are not US companies. The world largest chemical producer and buyers are not US companies. Recent merger like Dowdupont, monsanto, in the US is simply an indication the lack of competitive pricing.  BASF, Chemchina, etc are killing it in the global market. Dupont sale to DOW is really  a bailout of bleeding company.  Monsanto is next in line.  They won't make it against Syngenta-chemchina.  US chemical industry is simply shrinking, can't compete globally.  http://cen.acs.org/content/cen/articles/95/i19/Top-50-US-chemical-producers.html