Oil: Rent Or Buy?

Deutsche Bank's head of thematic strategy, Jim Reid, writes that as a lover of long-term data, oil has always fascinated him as over the long run it’s never been able to compete with financial assets as an investment. As an example, in Reid's last annual long-term study, he showed that over the last 150 years, oil has provided a real return of ‘only’ +0.5% annually, while US stocks are at +6.58% and 10yr USTs (and equivalents) are at +1.84%.