USO Investors: Get Ready for This Huge Hassle
Oil prices have plunged, and bullish energy investors find themselves wanting to bet on an oil price recovery in the near future. Many of them have turned to United States Oil Fund (NYSEMKT: USO), an exchange-traded investment that tries to track changes in the spot price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil.
U.S. Oil Fund has gotten a lot of attention recently because of the wild swings in its shares and the huge shifts in its strategy that it's had to make in order to deal with the unprecedented conditions in the oil markets. Yet as speculators pile into the shares, there's one thing that many of them aren't paying attention to -- and it could make their lives a lot more complicated than they realize.
Most people think of USO as an exchange-traded fund because its shares trade on the stock market during regular business hours. Yet technically, U.S. Oil Fund is set up as a limited partnership, and what investors are buying are actually limited partnership interests rather than shares of a corporation.
Source Fool.com