Crude oil based exchange traded products have taken an absolute beating lately, as recent speculation about slowing global growth, particularly in Emerging Markets such as China has rippled through almost all commodity markets.
U.S. Oil Fund (NYSEArca: USO), the most well-known and largest ETF in terms of assets under management in the oil space ($1.4 billion in AUM) gapped down yesterday to finish at a new fresh low on very heavy trading volume.
USO was last at these price levels in October of last year, and skyrocketed from there, but in the past month or so, Crude Oil products have had a very hard time gathering any upward momentum.
In the past one month period, USO has lost 16.78%, more than erasing any gains that the fund had going into May, and year to date USO is now down 13.36%. USO has registered 5 straight down weeks, and is now trading soundly below its 50 and 200 day moving averages.
Amid the recent sell-off, we have also seen at least 5% of the assets outstanding in USO leave the fund via redemption activity, so it is clear that at least some market participants are throwing in the towel on the commodity, at least for now.
Other ETPs on the long side of Oil to watch include DBO (PowerShares DB Oil), OIL (iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil ETN), UCO (ProShares Ultra DJ-UBS Crude Oil), USL (U.S. 12 Month Oil Fund), OLEM (iPath Pure Beta Crude Oil), OLO (PowerShares DB Crude Oil Long ETN), CRUD (Teucrium WTI Crude Oil) and UWTI (VelocityShares 3X Long Crude ETN).
Year to date, amongst the long only, un-levered funds listed above, CRUD has the best year to date performance (-9.75%). The rest of the returns look like the following: OIL -14.21%, USO -13.36%, DBO – 12.46%, USL -10.99% YTD.
U.S. Oil Fund
For more information on Street One ETF research and ETF trade execution/liquidity services, contact pweisbruch@streetonefinancial.com.
