To buy, you must have a membership to trade directly on this market. According to CMEGroup, which owns the exchange, you must be “an adult possessing good moral character, a good reputation, business integrity, and adequate financial resources to assume the responsibilities and privileges of membership.” You also have to pay a fee, which costs roughly $100,000.
“As much as we talk about commodities as a number or an imaginary contract, there’s a physical aspect to it,” Doug Stetzer, vice president of EKT Interactive, a company that trains people going into the oil industry about how it works, told Motherboard. “If you own a contract of crude oil, when it executes, technically, you have to take delivery of the physical crude oil.”