dwb

Natural Gas ETF Suspends New Shares: Are There Alternatives?

counterparty risk-> on ICE cleared OTC swaps the risk is essentially the same as NYMEX cleared products. UNG does not face the counteryparty directly though ICE clearing. Liquidity on ICE for the look-alikes is fine. Clearly the author does not understand ICE cleared products.

closed ended-> Since when are futures and swaps "closed ended." wha? USL uses swaps to track "12 month oil". The real risk is that the swaps perform differently than the prompt (that is, if UNG uses 3, 6, 12 month swaps instead of mostly prompt and prompt +1). A 6 month swap will perform very differently than 1 month prompt and is likely to outperform prompt declining prices and underperform prompt rising prices (back months will not rise/fall as much as prompt). For example, suppose there is a hurricane: Oct and Nov production get disrupted so those contracts soar. Dec, Jan, Feb mos are increasingly less likely to be affected and rise less. The increase in a swap will be the avg increase of all those months. If UNG uses 2-month swaps or prompt and prompt+1 then UNG rises the full amount of oct and nov futures increases. If UNG uses a 6-month swap it rises less (the avg increase of all 6 forward months).

On the roll yield, using swaps might actually mitigate the loss in a steeply contango market as less is lost rolling the back month(s) if the contango flattens after 6 months as it does now. Of course, this depends on the term of the swaps and the shape of the contango.

Metals and Mining: Blast Off!

Metals and miners are not created equal. While the long term supply/demand for some metals might remain, lower energy prices will be more than offset by increasing labor costs as labor looks to get a piece of the action (as the recent strikes show). Moreover, the housing slump in the U.S. is going to kill demand for copper (whose demand is principally driven by residential construction). Moreover, China is actively working to cool the red hot construction market not only with monetary policy but by firing regional govenors who fail to slow projects.

The 1-2 punch of increasing labor costs and slumping demand is going to drive companies like PD and PCU with 50% exposure to the U.S. market well below current levels.

Commodities bulls are buying all metals and miners alike - just based on news of OPEC cutting oil supply - but we are now entering a phase of differentiation between margins and markets, miners and metals. There are some great long/short trades to be made by differentiating the propects of individual companies and markets against the backdrop of hedge funds who are all buying and selling the whole commodities stack en masse.