This purely results from contango issues which, as the fund “rolls” futures contracts into the open market on a monthly, pre-planned basis, returns are literally eaten up during this process over time.
DBO in fact was designed with a different methodology, not unlike CRUD where a “blend” of futures are generally used within the fund and rolled in such a way to mitigate the effects of contango and/or backwardation.
Year to date, we see that USO has fared the worst in this group, which is not at all surprising. USO is down 11.67% versus DBO down 8.67%, and CRUD, despite its very low average daily volume and tiny asset base, is down only 7.87%.
Teucrium WTI Crude Oil Fund
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