Does Yahoo have a symbol for commonly quoted price of oil to add to my things tracked on my Yahoo! portfolio?

Question

Does Yahoo have a symbol for commonly quoted price of oil to add to my things tracked on my Yahoo! portfolio?

Answer 1

Yes, but it changes monthly.

The problem with Oil, or commodities in general, is that they are future contracts whose ticker change with each month as the contracts expire.  You can use: "CLQ08.NYM" which is the August 2008 Crude Oil Future; this is the most near term contract.  If you use this it will give you the accurate price commonly quoted in the news, but you will need to update it once the contracts expire at month end. The new future ticker can be found in the list of Oil Futures here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/fc?s=CLQ08.NY...

Hope that helps.