Oil Trading with CFDs | FOREX.com Australia

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CFD oil prices

What is an oil CFD?

An oil CFD is a derivative product that enables you to take a speculative position on one of the world’s most traded commodities.

Oil markets are often volatile, which presents opportunities for CFD traders to go long or short on futures prices, spot prices and oil-linked stocks.

Learn about oil futures

How to trade oil CFDs

1. Create a trading account or use a risk-free demo
2. Choose from oil futures, spot prices, or stocks and ETFs
3. Open your first position
4. Monitor your position using technical and fundamental analysis

Learn how to trade oil CFDs

Practise oil trading risk free with $20,000 AUD in virtual funds.

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Oil CFD costs

Trading Brent oil and WTI through CFDs is commission free with FOREX.com. Instead, you’re charged via the spread, which is the difference between the buy and sell price. For example, if WTI (US Crude) is trading at 68.56, with a 2.5 spread, you’d see a buy price of 6860.9 and a sell price of 6863.4.

And, because CFDs are leveraged, you only need to pay 10% of the full value of the trade you want to open. For example, if you want to place a CFD trade for $5,000 worth of Brent, you’d only need to pay $500 as the initial capital to open the trade. However, both your profit and loss would be calculated on the full $5,000 – creating the potential for magnified gains and risk.

Learn more about CFD costs

Brent CFDs vs WTI CFDs

Brent crude CFDs – UK Crude on our platform – track the price of Brent futures. Brent is the benchmark for oil extracted from the North Sea, which has a low density and low sulphur content.

WTI crude CFDs – US Crude on our platform – follow the price of West Texas Intermediary futures. This is the benchmark for oil extracted from across the United States. It’s generally lighter and sweeter than Brent and contains even less sulphur.

Generally, Brent CFDs trade at a premium to WTI, because supply is lower while North America has ramped up shale and oil sand extraction. However, Brent CFDs and WTI CFDs have similar underlying contract specifications.

	Brent (UK) crude	WTI (US) crude
Exchange	Intercontinental Exchange (ICE)	New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX)
Contract unit	1,000 barrels	1,000 barrels
Price quote	US dollars per barrel	US dollars per barrel
Minimum fluctuation (tick value)	0.01 per barrel ($10)	0.01 per barrel

Spot prices for US and UK Crude are based on the prices of the futures with the nearest expiries – making it important to understand the underlying contracts.