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Here's what happened when I tried to buy a barrel of crude oil
"Don't buy a barrel of oil," the broker said. "It'll kill you." A fortuitous meeting between a gas trader and his broker at a downtown bar was not going the way I had hoped. After revealing a long-held plan to try to buy a barrel of crude, I was now receiving a disappointingly stern lecture on the dangers of hydrogen sulfides. The wine tasted vaguely sulfuric, too. Oil may be king of the commodities, but its physical form is tough to come by for a retail investor. Mom and Pop can buy gold and silver, gather aluminum cans, grow soybeans and strip copper wiring, but oil remains elusive-and for very good reason. Oil, as ... (full story)