Ten days ago we warned "the sharp slide in crude prices may be leading the proverbial sheep to slaughter," as we noted the surge in Oil ETF USO's shares outstanding and the spike in Oil price contango - a potentially ugly combination for an ETF ahead of the roll. Since then, USO has indeed tumbled over 14%. However, it's not over yet - in the last 3 days alone, the USO share count has soared 10% (the fastest pace in 2 months) almost at its Feb 2009 record highs as investors "know" the bottom is in now and continue to catch the gapping-lower-every-day, massively contango'd, ETF knife...
Carnage... (note the increasing frequency of gap opens)
As the share count continues to soar...
We suspect a lot of the ETF creation is sell-side firms picthiung structured notes liened against USO... with principal impairments coming soon...
Charts: Bloomberg
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