About Spread and Arbitrage

Chaos49

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Hi guys

I am currently learning the knowledge of oil trading, and may need some help.
I read from one book about the 'Carrying' switches, or carrying spread. It said this will happen if the price of a forward month is greater than the price of a nearer one plus the cost of keeping the product until the forward month.
However, if this is traded in future market, it does not need to be really 'physical' settled right, so why still need to consider about the physical storage?
It also said the deal is closed-out by taking delivery of the product off the market and putting it back in the further month, so in this way, the physical delivery must be processed? which is different with the common understanding of future market, which the physical delivery is few to happen.
So I got a bit confused here, hope someone can help me.

Also, I would like to ask the different of spread and arbitrage. They are basically both the simultaneous selling of the same or similar commodity in one market, and purchase in other, so what is the difference between them?

Regarding the very important Arbitrage between IPE and NYMEX, since the specifications of oil do not match exactly, so it should be not permitted to take delivery from one market and sell it in the other right. Then how this arbitrage related?

Sorry about ask so many elementary questions, because I am really a green hand in this area, but really have interest to learn. Therefore, really hope that some one could help me.

Thanks very much!!!!
 
I will try to answer the carry question in a simple way and then I would advise going to any book on trading commodities as the cost of carry always has to be taken into consideration when trading futures. If a trader owned physical crude oil in November and he wanted to store the oil until december because the price of oil was higher at the end of december, he would have to pay for the storage of the oil, therefore the price that he can sell in december needs to be higher than the price he can sell in November + the cost of the storage for that extra month. So, logically the price of futures usually take into consideration this cost of storage, or more accuratley, cost of carry which includes storage, financing and insurance costs. This is why the Crude oil etf can be a rip-off for the uninformed trader as in the scenario of a contango market he is paying the rolling costs every month
 
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