there does seem to be some misunderstanding of ung
The fund doesn’t try to match the spot price of the commodity. Its goal is to follow the percentage change in the price of the commodity’s front month contract, said John Hyland, portfolio manager and chief investment officer of the fund. When the market is in contango, meaning the near month contract is cheaper than the contracts further out, the fund will underperform the underlying commodity, he said.
Investors see “natural gas” in the name of the fund and assume the fund mimics the commodity’s performance, said Paul Justice, an ETF strategist at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago. That’s not the case.
“It’s a horrible investor experience if you believe gas prices will go up, and they went up, and you still didn’t make money,” said Justice in an interview. “You just didn’t do your homework. The ETF is doing what it said it was going to do. You just didn’t find the right product.”