The price of oil has fluctuated wildly in the last few years and has placed a spotlight on oil investing vehicles. Of particular interest has been the discrepancy between oil investing returns and the hypothetical returns to spot oil. We attempt to understand the source of that discrepancy by...

The ability of oil investment vehicles to perfectly track spot oil has always been challenging, however recently many vehicles have underperformed spot oil. We study the behavior of oil futures and exchange-traded products that invest in oil futures to document and understand the source of this...