彭博深度解析USCF能源绝对收益ETF与USO机制差异

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That's the thing that I find a little bit jarring. So when you hear absolute, you think of a positive number. You basically think of something going up. It's saying I'm giving you a return whether the markets are going up or down because of my ability to go long or short.

Welcome to joints. I'm Joel Weber

and I'm Eric Baltunes.

It's hard not to talk about oil this year. It's just been a theme. But I was surprised for this episode to learn about an ETF other than the United States Oil Fund, USO, which is just the big dog in oil, and it's the one that we usually talk about when we talk about oil. But this other ETF is is pretty dynamic. Same flows and it has some aspects that normal investors might want to know about. And I can say this for the first time ever.

You could actually like maybe think about being a retail investor who touches oil. It still holds futures, which is just the nature of a commodity ETF. But you won't get a surprise come tax season either. This time on trillions, a new oil train. Every time we talk about oil, we talk about uh a certain ETF which is the United States Oil Fund. The ticket for that is USO and your research has serviced a new one. Which is it?

Yeah. Right. So USO is the famous one. It holds futures very close to what we call front month. So it's very sensitive, but has some other issues which we'll discuss, but it's by far the most popular. Uh but there's another one that is just maybe a little more uh risk averse and a little safer for people than uso uh called use which is US which is the word for I want to use something or uh the plural word for um you in Philly use guys any sorry bad joke local joke it's true though I hear use once a week here anyway the USF the USCF energy commodity strategy absolute return fund.

So, we'll go in what it is, but just real quick, Joel, I find this oil trade fascinating because it just seems like Trump is caught in between these two opposing forces. And that's why this oil trade has been so fun for traders because Iran does something to irk him and he goes wild with the tough talk and then oil spikes because it's like, oh, they're going to close the straits. Then stocks go down because oil's spiking and inflation fears ramp up and he's like, "Oh no."

Because he loves the stock market being up. So he's like, "Oh, we have a deal or we may have a deal."

Yeah. I've heard that a few times.

And there's probably been like I'm going to No lie, 20 stock market rallies based on hopes of a deal.

Yeah.

It's like that Dave Chappelle meme. Got any more hopes of a deal? Anyway, and once the stock market goes back up, he goes back to being upset about Iran and around and around we go. So, we thought we'd focus on the oil side of this equation. And Andre picked a real uh hidden gem here.

And Andre is Andre Yap. He's a ETF research senior associate at Bloomberg Intelligence. Andre, welcome back to Trillions.

Thank you for having me. Okay, now remind our listeners how the ETF of the moment happens. You guys are constantly looking at ETFs, but this is a little different in that you have some screening mechanisms to see what's got some momentum.

Yeah. So, we take a quantitative approach to try to identify ETFs which are having a moment. Um basically we screen based on two criteria. We screen based on returns. The returns need to be positive particularly over the short term to show that there's some momentum happening right now. And we also look to see an increase in trading volume. So we want to see typically at least a 50% jump in the number of shares that are being traded for us to even consider it as a candidate for the ETF of the moment.

And if all of those signals kind of work in its favor, what is what distinguishes an ETF of the moment?

I think what distinguishes it, why we would probably pick amongst the peer group is something that is topical, something that people want to hear about, something that we want to explore and that seems interesting or fun or just weird. And usually because it's of the moment, it's like we're getting a little sneak peek of something that's going to be trending in the near uh in the near future. So talk to us about use is the ticker.

Uh the USCF energy commodity strategy absolute return fund. That's a pretty uh long mouthful of a name. Uh what does it do and how does it work?

Yeah, it's an absolute mouthful. So, it's an actively managed ETF that utilizes long, short, or spread positions in futures contracts tied with energy commodities. By energy commodities, I don't mean simply crude. So, it's tied to WTI and Brent crude as well as natural gas, gasoline, diesel, and I think gas oil. So, it spans the energy gamut. So, that's how it differs a little bit from USO, the more popular brother.

Okay. And and speaking of which, we've talked about USO a lot. The thing that Eric always talks about with USO, United States Oil Fund, we're rolling futures with that ETF, which instantly puts it in a world where retail investors uh in particular are potentially going to get punished. Does this still touch futures? And if so, how does the role differ from what uh USO does?

Yeah, it still touches futures. So it's still buyer beware somewhat. It differs in that with USO it basically only goes long. So you can get into a situation where you're basically facing the ro yield um where you can basically get positive or negative returns depending on whether the market's in contango or backwardation. The same risk exists with use. However, the strategy is more dynamic because it has the capacity to go long to go short as well as take spread positions.

So it's a little bit more dynamic in its strategy and implementation of it than USO in my opinion.

Why is that interesting, Eric?

Yeah, because I mean just for anybody out there, think about the oil futures curve and words like contango. And that curve changes a lot based on what people think oil will be worth in the future. And it's a very specific local market that experts um you know trade in. But if you're not one of those people, this is sort of like saying, "Hey, look, let's take this company that knows this market well and let them kind of trade around this and try to exploit the oil situation as best they can and really free them up to go short if they need to.

And by doing long short, you also bring your volatility down a little, right? Because sometimes you have some offsetting positions. So this is a slightly less less volatile ETF than USO. So, in the downturns when Trump was like told everybody there's hopes of a deal and oil came crashing down, this one will come down a little less. But pound-forpound, I just think it's an interesting option. It's still very small. Uh the price is still it's 79 basis points.

It only has 7 million. So there's there are some things that I don't love about it, but I I think there are just some areas of the market where handing it over to an active manager who can just do things with no restraints uh can work well potentially. Again, so this is just an alternative to USO, which is much more of a robotic ETF that's just giving you the front front month futures and you know, for better or worse.

So you actually have a human in the cockpit with this. Andre, what's the performance been like?

Well, it's been somewhat of a mixed bag, but this year the performance has been pretty good. So, if you're looking at it on a year-to-ate basis, use up 83%. But if you compare it to USO or just the WTI in general, WTI crude, um, those are up 186% for USO and 153% year to date for WTI. So, it does lag them a little bit, but if you look at it just over the third quarter, which is basically from July till right now, we're not completely through, it's pretty much in line.

They're all up about 35%. Yeah. I mean, 50% return year to date is still pretty good. Um although USO is up 100%. But this is, by the way