Spread Betting

[Liability]

You're right, trading does require constant monitoring, thats why I couldnt hack it whilst I was working in a city IT job. Now I trade full time, its a lot easier.

As you say, no reason why you cant invest rather than trade. I will be managing my new baby's child trust fund and that will be investing rather than trading. Thinking about long term buy on gold and crude oil.

Gold is a bit of a herring right now - as its correlation to Forex changes - although saying that; it's not at its high's right now if I recall?

[ace00]

Is there any 12 month etf for oil ?

ETFs don't actually work like that (they don't expire, although they are based on futures) .Just a little tip for ETFs, have a good look at this site:
http://www.etfsecurities.com/
Should be everything you need to know there. The usual 10% applies for any profits made, I have paypal.