Watching the May contract for oil futures this morning, I was shocked at the amount of coverage given to “oil’s plunge” Monday morning. That may be because I watch the May 2021 WTI futures contract, which has fallen $0.18 per barrel to $35.34 in early Monday trading, not the May 2020 contract which has fallen an astounding $7.42 (more than 40%) to $10.84 per barrel and drawn all the headlines.

The culprit here is obvious. The United States Oil ETF, USO.

According to Bloomberg, USO owned 25% of the outstanding volume of May WTI oil futures contracts as of last week. With that contract set to expire Tuesday, the buyers of that “paper oil” have to sell or take physical delivery at the end of May. ETFs like USO are not created to take physical delivery of the oil contracts they hold, so in a long squeeze, the fund’s managers—USO’s general partner/sponsor is U.S. Commodity Funds, LLC (USCF) and, according to an 8-K filed on March 30th, the administration of USO will transition from Brown Brothers Harriman to Bank of New York Mellon, although it is unclear whether that change has been fully implemented—have to dump oil. Regardless of who is doing the selling, front-month futures prices have dropped more than 40% today. The June contract has also fallen, to be sure, but by a much lower degree (it is now down $2.37/barrel to $22.36.) That decline might be expected in the throes of the worst pandemic to have hit planet Earth in the past 100 years. There is no economic outcome that could possibly justify single-digit prices for oil, though, and USO‘s implosion has put the benchmark WTI crude oil futures contract on the precipice of that benchmark today. So, as I noted about the now-defunct XIV, ETF in this Forbes column, USO works until it doesn’t work. Today it is clearly not working. The solution here is for USO’s fund administrators to dissolve it, as happened with XIV. Those administrators made a minute change in the fund’s composition last week—shifting holdings to the second- and third-month contracts instead of fully rolling over from the front-month contract to the second-month contract two weeks prior to expiration——but that was merely the proverbial shifting of the deck chairs on the Titanic. USO has outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any. The sad thing about the trend toward ETFs is the human economic toll that can be caused by exaggerated price swings. The U.S. oil rig count fell by 11%—the largest weekly decrease in recent memory—in last week’s Baker Hughes BHI count. None of my oilpatch contacts is telling me this morning that this is the bottom, either. Roughnecks and rig workers are losing their jobs so that USCF, Bank of New York, and the fund’s distributor, ALPS, can earn their fees on USO. How does this end? Well, COVID-19 has brought to the fore economic possibilities that would have seemed outrageous six months ago. In my other writing platforms I have mentioned the possibility that the Fed could start buying USO. As the Fed’s current buying remit includes bond ETFs, LQD (high-grade) and HYG (high-yield,) I see no barrier to the Fed buying another ETF. Aside from even more government overreach, though, the solution to low oil prices is, as they say in Houston, low oil prices. As marginal U.S oil production drops to zero and production curtailments by OPEC+ hit the markets, oil will once again become a scarce good as global economies begin to recover from COVID-19 lockdowns in the second half of 2020. Companies that store oil on a temporary basis are thus the huge winners here. As I have noted in prior Forbes columns, my firm, Excelsior Capital Partners, has enormous proportional exposure to the oil tanker industry via holdings in Nordic American Tankers, Navios Maritime Acquisition and Tsakos Energy Partners. There will be a day when arbitrageurs look at the act of renting a VLCC oil tanker solely to serve as an oversized storage closet as an act of folly. Thanks to USO and the enormous amount of contango (intermediate-term contracts are worth much more than near-term ones) in the oil futures curve caused by the implosion of USO, today is not that day. Tomorrow sees a new day for oil traders as the May WTI futures contract expires. Anyone who thinks that today’s plunge in the price of the front-month oil futures contract can’t happen again is solely misleading herself, though. So, I will keep owning companies that have scarce products (oil tankers) that offer energy traders the optionality to play the extreme distortions in the commodities futures curve caused by ETFs like USO.

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I have researched stocks for 27 years, starting fresh out of college at Lehman Brothers and then moving to Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. At DLJ I was a Senior Analyst following US auto parts companies before relocating to London to originate DLJ’s European Automotive coverage and then moving to UBS. I had a decade of sell-side experience, attaining the CFA designation. After years of growing my own portfolio, I founded Portfolio Guru LLC three years ago. I construct portfolios for my clients on a fee-only, separately-managed basis and write about small stocks in my newsletter, MicroCap Guru. My work is also featured on Real Money, the premium portal of TheStreet.com. The Sanskrit root of “Guru” combines “dispel” and “darkness.” I invest solely for individuals, and for them I try to dispel the darkness that emanates from Wall Street. My friends enjoy poking fun at my nom de stock, and when I am not Guru-ing, I enjoy spending time with them, outdoor activities, and sampling NYC. I can be reached at jim@excap.biz

Source: The U.S. Oil ETF, USO, Is The Culprit Behind Oil’s Massive Plunge

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CNBC’s Bob Pisani breaks down the action in the oil exchange-trade funds. Something that’s never happened in the oil market is happening today: Negative prices for oil contracts. While many people may see this and think the overall price of oil is negative, there’s nuance. The short answer is that no, not all oil is free. The picture in the market is not as bleak as this eye-popping headline would suggest. Futures contracts are tied to a specific delivery date. Toward the end of a contract’s expiration date, the price typically converges with the physical price of oil as the final buyers of these contracts are entities like refineries or airlines that are going to take actual physical delivery of the oil. Futures contracts ultimately are contracts for physical delivery of the underlying commodity or security. While some people in the market speculate on the contracts, others are buying and selling because they have use for the commodity itself. Near the contract’s expiration, traders just start buying the next month’s futures contract. Those who stay in the position to the final day are typically buying the physical commodity, such as a refiner. The contract that fell more than 100% on Monday is for May delivery, and it expires on Tuesday. With the coronavirus pandemic leading to unprecedented demand loss, and with storage tanks quickly filling up, there is no demand for this oil contract expiring Tuesday. That’s why it turned negative, meaning producers would pay to get this oil off their hands because there is no one that needs that oil this week with the country shutdown. Futures contracts trade by the month. The contract for June delivery traded 16% lower at $21.04 per barrel. So after that contract expires on Tuesday, oil will be back above $20. The U.S. Oil Fund, which tracks the price of various futures on oil, fell just 10%. Trading volume was also relatively thin in the May contract. According to data from the CME Group, volume stood at roughly 126,400. By comparison volume for the June contract was nearly 800,000. Again Capital’s John Kilduff attributed the plunge in the May contract to the fact that “the physical oil market conditions are a disaster, with growing concerns about finding available storage.” Longer-term, he said the picture looks brighter. “The higher priced, longer-dated futures contracts are indicative that of the market expecting some level of clearing in the cash market over the course of the next several months,” he told CNBC. “Given the rapid decline in the U.S. oil rig count and the expected cutback by OPEC+ members that is a reasonable assumption.” That said, he noted that as the subsequent contracts reach expiration, they could engage in their own “death march down towards the super-low cash prices.” For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2JdMwO7 » Subscribe to CNBC TV: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCtelevision » Subscribe to CNBC: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC » Subscribe to CNBC Classic: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCclassic Turn to CNBC TV for the latest stock market news and analysis. From market futures to live price updates CNBC is the leader in business news worldwide. Connect with CNBC News Online Get the latest news: http://www.cnbc.com/ Follow CNBC on LinkedIn: https://cnb.cx/LinkedInCNBC Follow CNBC News on Facebook: https://cnb.cx/LikeCNBC Follow CNBC News on Twitter: https://cnb.cx/FollowCNBC Follow CNBC News on Instagram: https://cnb.cx/InstagramCNBC #CNBC #CNBC TV

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