CL: WTI crude oil basics

Meet CL — the world's busiest oil contract

CL is the ticker symbol for West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures, traded on NYMEX (the energy arm of CME Group). When you hear a headline like 'oil rallied two percent today,' the chart driving that headline is almost always CL. It's the most actively traded energy futures contract in the world by volume, and front-month CL routinely changes hands more than a million times a day. That kind of liquidity matters — it means tight spreads, fast fills, and a price that genuinely reflects the global oil market.

The specs are simple to remember. One CL contract represents 1,000 barrels of crude oil. The price moves in one-cent increments — the minimum tick is $0.01 per barrel. Multiply that by 1,000 barrels and one tick is worth $10. So if crude moves from $78.40 to $78.50, that's ten ticks, or $100 per contract. A full dollar move ($78 to $79) is $1,000 per contract. Big numbers in both directions, which is why position sizing in energy is its own skill — we'll cover that in lesson ten.

WTI itself is a specific grade of crude — a light, sweet oil produced in the US shale basins, especially the Permian. The 'sweet' part means low sulfur (easier and cheaper to refine into gasoline). The contract is physically deliverable at Cushing, Oklahoma — the pipeline crossroads where US crude inventories pile up. You will hear Cushing mentioned a lot when traders talk about CL. Most speculators never go anywhere near physical delivery; they close their position before expiration. But the fact that delivery is physical, and happens at one specific place, shapes the forward curve in ways we'll explore in lesson four.

CL trades nearly 24 hours a day on the CME Globex platform, Sunday evening through Friday afternoon US time. Volume concentrates during US morning hours, especially around the EIA inventory release every Wednesday at 10:30am ET. We'll cover EIA reports as their own lesson because they routinely move CL one to three percent in minutes.

Recap: CL is WTI crude oil futures on NYMEX. 1,000 barrels per contract, $10 per tick, physically deliverable at Cushing, OK. Most traded energy contract in the world. Start with MCL if you're new.