I bought the oil bull today. I could have waited to sell the bear until today, since the ETF has been based on the April contract since yesterday's trading.
Romanowski, my oil ETF trades, based on the NYMEX price for oil, represents my gambling money, in accord with the nature of this board. I've been watching oil for some months and feel that profits can be made from short term trades using the 2X derivatives as the market swings within a fixed range (basically $35-$47 more or less). I hope to make 10% return on the bull over a couple of weeks and then buy the bear again. If you watch the US oil storage stats they've been increasing for months and the storage at Cushing, OK is near capacity. Declining storage will indicate that oil has the potential to break out and if/when the economy improves it will likely move up to the $70/80 range.
I agree with buying strong well run companies. I'm retired (65) and in my pension portfolio I've moved from 50:50 equities:fixed income to 65:35. It's quite aggressive but so long as I can fund 5-6 years without having to sell equities I think I can ride this out, unless it becomes a severe depression when all bets are off. So far as oil goes I hold both an integrated oil and holdings in the tar sands where the cost of production is $45 a barrel.
