VelocityShares Credit Suisse 3X Long Crude ETN (UWTIF)

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Spanky, some constructive criticism here for anyone stating they're holding UWTI (or DWTI) for the long term: over even just a several-month period and certainly longer (12-18 months out), these 3X Leveraged ETNs/ETFs will DECAY CONSIDERABLY because of the basic math entailed in the intra-week volatility (e.g., if an ETN at $100 went up 30% the first day, but down 30% the second day, it's not back at $100 but down to $91).

So even if oil went to $120 in 15 months, the likelihood is that UWTI would only be around $6-$8, not $30 or $50.

That's why the expert traders i've consulted on these 3x ETN/ETF plays prefer to SHORT them over the more extended time-periods, and only stay "long" in these bull/bear plays for short to fairly-short periods.... no more than a month or two at most!

Just look at the longer term charts on any of these bull/bear 3x funds (on oil, natgas, gold, etc.) and notice the whopping amount of decay and reverse share-splits.

E.g., go to https://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=UWTI&ql=1
and select the "5 Year" span.

Then in the "Go to Symbol" box to the upper right of the chart, examine one after another the bull/bear ETNs/ETFs for natgas (UGAZ, DGAZ) and junior gold miners (JNUG, JDST), etc.

DWTI, the inverse of UWTI, is actually the ONLY ONE out of these six bull/bear pairs i cited (and i could cite many more) that is actually UP since its inception in early 2012, and even then it went from an early high of 87 (June 2012) all the way down to 25, and despite the spectacular plunge of oilprices the past 8 months (when DWTI soared into the $190s) now at ~$107 it's only 20 bucks higher than its early $87 high of June 2012, when oil traded up in the $90s or higher.

Bottom line: these instruments are for short-term to fairly-short-term SWING TRADING, NOT LENGTHY "BUY & HOLD" strategies.


If you think WTI oil is going back to $90s-$100s in next year or two, then it's MUCH BETTER to buy the oil-producer stocks and oil-service companies and other energy-sector names that can leverage such prices into actual big cash profits!