Heating Oil Trading

What is Heating Oil?

Heating Oil is a liquid petroleum product, refined from crude oil, which has several uses such as furnaces, boilers in buildings and fuel oil, and its main use is for residential heating. This is the most important alternative energy source for homes that do not have the ability to heat their homes with natural gas. Its actual abbreviation is HHO.

With AvaTrade you can trade heating oil on the most advanced trading platforms MetaTrader 4 and AvaTradeGO and benefit from:

Leverage of up to on CFD trading
Competitive spreads
Analysis and trading educational materials
An outstanding multi-lingual customer service
An internationally forex & CFD regulated broker
Trade on the move anywhere, anytime with our new trading mobile app AvaTradeGO

The use of heating oil became important when the oil burner was invented in the 1920’s. It replaced coal for indoor heating, since it was cheaper, easier to handle, and better for the environment. Over the past number of years heating oil has become even more efficient, safer, and cleaner. Home heating oil provides an even heat and the homeowners can control temperatures with the thermostat. Usually heating oil is delivered by a tank truck to commercial and residential buildings and stored in tanks.

Heating oil prices have become so reasonable that sales in the industry of oil heating businesses in the U.S are over $16 billion.

Heating Oil Prices

The prices of heating oil can be affected by many different factors. To reduce the risk of price fluctuations producers can use what is called a short hedge. This sets a fixed selling price for the heating oil to be produced to be set in contract.

Heating oil futures are used towards prices of jet fuel oil and diesel. The different seasonal demands for the heating oil alters the price up or down, and the prices tend to rise in the spring.

The US dollar and different commodities have an inverse correlation. Oil contracts are negotiated and settled in USD. Therefore, when the USD value changes, the value of the commodity trading also is also likely to change. It doesn’t mean that oil is worth less, it just means that the US dollar is worth more. Heating oil in futures contract trades in units of 1,000 barrels, minimum fluctuation of $0.0001 per gallon.

Crude oil prices lead the gas prices; however, the way crude oil is processed also plays a role in the price increases. The seasonal changeover to summer-blend duel is what leads the way for gasoline prices to rise.

The U.S Environment Protection Agency defines April to June as the “Transition season” for fuel production. Refineries lead the way for this switch in March and April. The blend in gasoline is different in the winter months and in the summer months.

Natural disasters such as hurricane Harvey can heavily affect heating oil prices. In situations where staff are evacuated from all platforms in the gulf and production stops, prices rise overall. Prices in energy commodities trading are highly volatile even more than 10 years ago, some of the reasons can be taxes, supply issues and anticipation by futures traders.

Trading Conditions at AvaTrade:

Min Trade Size 1000
Leverage
Increment: 0.001
MT4 Symbol: HEATING_OIL

For investors looking to trade heating oil, AvaTrade has many benefits including a wide range of educational tools to help you become a better trader. We have a wide range of educational tools to help you become a better trader, as well as a professional customer service team. Trading charts and graphs are sent to you daily with our market analysis!

Here are a few more advantages:

Leveraged trading, meaning the opportunity of borrowing funds from the broker for investing. This allows a trader to open a much larger position with minimal investment. Keep in mind that leverage can magnify your potential profits and at the same time can magnify your losses.
Automated trading, refers to using systems that can perform recurring tasks at high speed. This software creates automatic orders and submits them to a market exchange. It can also replicate positions of experienced traders with a proven success record.
Short selling, which is a method based on the belief that an asset’s price will decline, which would allow it to be bought back at the lower price in order to profit. “Sell high, buy low” defines short selling which allows the trader to trade and benefit on bearish markets.