The United States Oil Fund (NYSEArca: USO) is off almost 27% over the past 90 days, but that glum performance is not damping some investors’ enthusiasm for oil exchange traded funds.
Even with prices of West Texas Intermediate, the crude contract tracked by USO, sliding 21% last month, investors poured $821 million into USO, nearly a third of the ETF’s $2.5 billion in assets under management, reports Rupert Hargreaves for ValueWalk.
The VelocityShares 3x Long Crude ETN (NYSEArca: UWTI), which tracks three times or 300% the daily performance of WTI crude, is another struggling oil exchange traded product that investors just can’t seem to get enough. As a triple-leveraged product, UWTI has been recently drubbed, plunging 64.6% over the past 90 days, but UWTI “saw inflows rise to $653 million — once again an enormous sum in comparison to the size of the fund. UWTI has $956 million in total assets,” according to ValueWalk.
Perhaps those piling into USO, UWTI and rival oil funds are buying into some recent bullish oil forecasts from various sell-side analysts.
Some investment banks, though, are growing more bullish on the oil outlook for the rest of the year. For example, JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) projects Brent crude oil to rise to $65 per barrel in the third quarter and $67 per barrel in the fourth, reports Arjun Kharpal for CNBC. Barclays analysts anticipate Brent to reach $61 per barrel in the third quarter and $66 per barrel in the fourth. Nevertheless, the bank warned of ongoing issues that may still cause short-term volatility, which contributed to their slightly lower forecast.
Looking ahead, oil observers expect the supply and demand dynamic to become more balanced in 2016. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries also projected rising demand for oil this year and the next, which could “imply an improvement toward a more balanced market.” [Oil ETFs Look to Rally]
Traders can profit from more oil declines with ETFs such as the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil (NYSEArca: SCO) and the VelocityShares 3x Inverse Crude (NYSEArca: DWTI). SCO tries to reflect the two times inverse or -200% daily performance of WTI crude oil while DWTI takes the three times inverse or -300% performance of crude oil. [Inverse ETFs to Hedge Against Hurdles Ahead]
However, traders have not been compelled to embrace the likes of DWTI and SCO. Since the start of the current quarter, those ETFs have lost combined $171 million in assets while $834.5 million has flowed into USO.
United States Oil Fund
