Hacker News Reader

Comment by MatthewDPX | Hacker News Reader

There is a big difference between investing in companies that produce commodities and commodities themselves. XOM, CVX, BP and the like are companies that are in the business of producing oil to generate profit for their shareholders. Owning XOM/CVX/BP stock is investing, because there's a reasonable expectation that the companies will make money and return that profit to their shareholders in the form of a buyback or a dividend. Owning an actual commodity is like buying art or trading cards speculating your purchase will go up in value based on some inside knowledge you perceive to have. That is the definition of speculation.

View on HN

What if I buy crude oil in Texas, where it’s cheap, with the idea of selling it where it’s expensive (say, Europe) ?

I’m still investing.

In fact, I could build a company around it. And if I did, and then sold stock in that company to you and you used that as investment for retirement, then you would have just validated that buying a commodity is indeed investing.

Maybe not all the time, but certainly some of the time.

By the way, you can buy some of these companies today, under tickers such as TNP, NAT, DHT, among others.

investing implies a long term horizon. if you are just taking advantage of an arbitrage opportunity then you are a commodity distributor/shipper or commodity trader. you aren't investing in the underlying asset you want to hold the asset for as short a period as possible to avoid the arbitrage disappearing beneath you.

Investing implies no such time horizon.

Investing is spending money with an expectation of a return.

For contrast, expenses have no expected return.

Neither have a time horizon. And further, what would “long term” be anyway? Not sure how you could ever define it.

the interesting thing about crypto is that it allows for diversified speculation/investment in the equivalent of the oil drillers to gas station owners.

I have not found a comparable analogy. The problem is that btc or eth may not correlate with long-term crypto growth bc they may start a trend, but another similar tech may actually be the winner. Its interesting and I hope that people dont take too large of a personal position in the asset class as a % of total investments.

[Disclaimet] I currently 'invest' a small sum of money monthly in crypto assets. (Less than 1% of my portfolio monthly allocation)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com