Hi Simon,

Good to hear from you.

When evaluating a futures broker the main factors that most traders consider are the level of service, quality of execution, and commissions to trade.

If you are new to the futures markets and are going to need some help getting up and running then I would suggest: Options Xpress.

If you are an experienced futures trader who does not need much service then the lowest cost and best execution provider in my opinion is Interactive Brokers. As they offer cut rate pricing the service tends to be a little lacking.

I am not aware of any way to legally trade ETF's from the United States but I have not looked into it so you may want to contact a firm in the UK that provides this service and ask them to make sure. Two that I know of are City Index and Saxo Bank

If you are not trading highly leveraged you may also want to consider an Oil ETF as you could trade this directly from a stock trading account which many consider much easier than trading the futures contract. You can find more information on this below:

USO: Profile for U.S. OIL FUND ETF - Yahoo! Finance

Hope that helps. If anyone else has any comments here for Simon on this one I would appreciate it if you would post them below.

Best Regards,
Dave