In times of cheap oil prices, the forward curve is often in contango.

That means that the price for a prompt delivery is cheaper than a delivery in the future. So if you go long crude with futures, each month you have to roll your contracts before they expire, and buy a more expensive one. So you end up paying a premium.

Kinda like if you want to store oil to speculate, you have to pay for storage.

You might as well buy a basket of oil majors stocks, which are a pure play on oil prices

Agreed, which is why I do not want futures contracts, or any options with a set time horizon. I consider the current price to be a fluke, I am willing to make a significant bet that the prices will recover, but I do not know whether it will take 3 months or 5 years; I am willing to wait it out.

I understand that this will effectively mean paying a "storage premium", but I am looking to minimize such costs by pooling money with a large fund that does this for a living and has tools and agreements that I do not have.

On a basket of oil majors as a proxy: sorry, this sounds suspicious. I think there are a lot of factors beyond oil prices in play which should make those pretty well decorrelated from short term oil price movements. Is this really true? Honest question.

We invest in things that should not be

US is very different than Europe, because you pay from your own pocket for a lot of things (eg healthcare) that are state sponsored elsewhere. Also factor rent in NYC/SV

Employers in the US provide healthcare if you work full-time. You may pay a premium, but it's probably similar to the taxes you paying EU, if not lower.

Lower for who ?

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

That's what countries spend in total, I was talking about in context of individuals with good jobs (employer provided healthcare)

Btw a large reason why the US spends more on healthcare than other countries is research & development.

Don't you lose your job sponsored health care after being laid off ? Or is it expected that companies keeps you employed when you get a cancer / other high impact health issues ?

You'll most likely fall under COBRA protection (https://www.healthcare.gov/unemployed/cobra-coverage/)

where you can keep your employer coverage for 18 months while you find a new job.

If you don't pay for it from your own pocket, you pay for it in taxes.

Yes but if you're out of the ultra capitalist private US healthcare business that we're trapped in, you pay way less through taxes.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

That matters for populations, not individuals.

Someone earning $200k doesn't really need to worry about that kind of thing.

Also worth checking: Skritter.com

I think he used to follow back a lot around the time when I created my Twitter profile :)

I hadn't thought about that use case yet

thanks! let me know if i can improve it

Hey thanks! You should get a reply from the bot when trying to post. Only the bot commands (/done, /upvote, /downvote) are available during the work sessions

You fixed it, that's fast ;)