The New York Mercantile Exchange allows non-commercial traders to hold 10,000 net futures per contract month and a total of 20,000 contracts for all months in crude oil. However, the exchange has allowed a huge 117 exemptions since 2006. At certain points since that period, a single bank or fund could have held up to 300,000 contracts which is a third of the average daily trading volume. The trade is actively awaiting CFTC proposals. There are financial groups like GS who offer commodity indices to investors. They then turn around and buy futures to offset those positions. There are also long-only ETF's or ETN's like the United States Oil Fund and United States Natural Gas Fund which let investors buy oil or natural gas like a stock. The fund then turns around and buys futures.
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