Trade example: Amec Foster Wheeler (AMEC)

In the past 12 months, shares in Amec Foster Wheeler have traded as high as 620p and as low as 360p. 20,000 Amec Foster Wheeler shares can be bought for around £100,000. If the share price were to make it back to its October high of 630p, that implies 26% potential upside should a trader go long the stock using conventional purchase.

If the price fell back to Brexit lows of around 360p, however, a long position would be out of the money to the tune of 28%. Traditional shares only permit long positions, but with CFDs you can speculate just as easily on falling prices. Therefore, if you thought that Petrofac might be about to face some unpleasant business conditions, you could go short with a CFD. In that case, if the share price fell back to its November lows you could make a 28% profit before costs.

The percentage gains and/or losses on the chart above are based on full exposure to Amec Foster Wheeler shares. To trade Amec using a CFD requires a minimum deposit of 10%; 20,000 of the company’s shares can currently be secured with Accendo Markets for just £10,000 – with the same exposure as traditional shares, the same potential profit or loss – however it ties up a fraction of the capital required for normal shares. You can offset the leverage aspect by simply having £100,000 in your trading account. It’s a simple piece of engineering that would in this case save you £500 in stamp duty.

Leverage can also be useful, right? That said, it is of course extremely useful to consider the potential worst case scenario and allocate extra funds as you deem necessary to cover that possibility, but, as you can already see, by working with Accendo Markets your profit potential and trading flexibility are greatly increased with the added bonus of lower dealing costs.

With all this in mind, we’ve compiled some of our most popular Oil & Gas stocks below, summarising their year-to-date trading ranges, technical analysis and given an overview of broker targets on those stocks. Some are smaller sized stocks whose shares may not be the most liquid, but are prone to large price swings, while others are heavily traded, household name blue chip oil majors whose prices often change by a few percent intraday.

Please note that the following trade ideas are designed to give you an indication of the potential behaviour of Oil & Gas stocks given the market conditions present at the time. The pricing data is correct as at the time of writing.