For those who are interested in making a speculative play on oil, will you pick one or two individual stocks like XOM or CVX to buy? Or buy a mutual fund/ETF like VDE?
A fund like VDE is the least risky option, but also probably the least profitable. VDE is down like 25%, but oil prices are down like 40%. And in that environment, I'd be tempted to just trade the commodity itself.
Does anyone here seriously believe oil is going to stay under $60/barrel through next summer? Oil prices always spike during summers, right?
The safest way to play falling oil prices, though is to continue to buy index funds. Almost 10% of S&P500 is in energy stocks anyway, so everyone who is buying the index is, at least in part, buying oil company stocks while they're down.