The spot price for oil shot higher on Friday, June 6, renewing interest in the commodity while sinking stock prices. According to the WSJ, the intraday high of $139.12 per barrel shattered the previous record by more than $4.
ETF investors can establish positions on the price of oil as we first discussed in our March ETF Commentary post Oil ETFs.
Investors can take long or short positions on the spot price of oil withVictoria Bay Asset Management’s United States Oil Fund (USO) or the futures price with Barclay’s iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (OIL).
In addition, the United States 12 Month Oil Fund (USL) is an exchange-traded commodity pool that is designed to track the price movements of oil. The fund uses a series of benchmark future contracts on crude oil to have the changes in percentage terms of the units’ net asset value reflect the changes in percentage terms of the price of light, sweet crude oil.
Another choice for gaining exposure to oil with futures contracts is the PowerShares DB Oil Fund (DBO).
For more, see Investing in Oil with ETFs in the ETF Themes guide.
Indirect positions can be established with sector ETFs. For example, see our posts Oil Services ETFs and Oil Services ETFs Revisited.