A hedge happens when you are Long and Short positions within financial markets, thereby canceling any market risk. In this case, we are interested in Light Crude oil prices, and looking to use ETFs (that tracks and correlates the Oil prices) to find a good hedge and profit from it.

The hedge occurs when we are Long a stock ticker UCO for long direction for Crude Oil prices and Long a stock SCO for invest short position for Crude Oil prices

Before you begin this please look at the simplest dumbest way to use ETFs to trade, in case you haven’t know what UCO and SCO these 2 symbols means.

UCO = Prices goes up when Oil prices goes up
SCO = Prices goes up when Oil prices goes down

This strategy involves averaging up and/or down, and clear with the use of leverage/inverse leverage of ETFs. Added to the advantage is both ETF are 200% leverage, meaning if you had $1000 in UCO, a 1% increase in Light Crude prices equates roughly 2% for stock price of UCO. The same happens for SCO, or if you decided to short UCO.

Assuming Oil prices moves fluctuates to high and lows in a 5-10 day period, in these examples we do not care what are the oil prices, but instead go by percentage points.

Let’s give 2 hedging scenarios:

1) Oil moves lowest point.

UCO = $9
SCO = $16.66

Long UCO
100 x $9.00 = $900

Oil then moves up 5%

This causes UCO to go up 5% (200% = 10%), now @ $9.90

This causes SCO, to drop 5% (200% = 10%), now @ $15.

Long SCO
100 x $15 = $1500

Portfolio:
$0.90 x 100 = $90 Profit from UCO
$0.00 x 100 = $0 Neutral from SCO

Now you have a “perfect” hedge, because any movement in Oil prices will allow you to gain in both stock prices, or to cancel out any losses with profits from the other side. Hows the downside ? Brokerage fees. Now let’s look at example 2 with the same scenario.

1) Oil continue to rise. (Add positions to SCO)

UCO = $9.90
SCO = $15.00

Oil then moves up 3%

UCO = $9.90 + 6% = $10.50
SCO = $15.00 – 6% = $14.10

Long SCO
100 x $14.10 = $1410

Portfolio:
$10.50 – $9 x 100 = $150 Profit from UCO
$14.10 – ($15.00 + 14.10)/2 x 200 = $90 Loss from SCO

As you can see, the current standing is with profits from 100 UCO, you can safely long SCO because the prices of oil might have reach top. Let the Oil run for a few more percentage points, and demand will drop, thereby causing prices to drop.

Now onto Scenario 2:

2) Oil drops abruptly 4%. ( Do nothing)
Oil then drops another 7%, due to some rare events. (Long 100 UCO)

Let’s calculate the UCO SCO prices and portfolios:

UCO = $10.50 – 8% = $9.66
SCO = $14.10 + 8% = $15.22

Portfolio:
$9.66 – $9 x 100 = $66 Profit from UCO
$15.22 – $14.55 x 200 = $134 Profit from SCO

Now we see a total of 200, exactly before trading and brokerage fees. We need to consider 5 trade fees, 3 buy and 2 sell trades to clear off all positions.

Now you may wonder what if I am very smart and able to time the market to just buy and sell a single security UCO Long Oil. The difference is with just buy/sell, you generate more trades, while increase you risk as your VAR is @ 100%. Any drop in price means you lose the value.

If I sold UCO with a $150 profit, and oil prices continue to rise, then I’ll miss the boat. If it drops count me lucky. But, If I bought SCO instead, and oil prices continue to rise, then I am hedged, lowering my risk while lowering returns, though.

Let’s calculate the UCO SCO prices and portfolios:

Oil then drops another 7%, due to some rare events. (Long 100 UCO)

UCO = $9.66 – 14% = $8.30
SCO = $15.22 + 14% = $17.3

Portfolio:
$8.3 – $9 x 100 = $70 Loss from UCO
$17.3 – $14.55 x 200 = $550 Profit from SCO

Long UCO
100 x $8.3 = $830

Portfolio:
$8.3 – ($8.3 + $9)/2 x 200 = $70
$8.3 – $8.65 x 200 = $70 Loss from UCO
$17.3 – $14.55 x 200 = $550 Profit from SCO

Your positions won’t be affected by this long because it will depend how the prices move next. What you see now is a hedged positions with 200 shares long each, with a difference of $480, before trades.

Total trades = 4 buy, 2 sell.

Now taking that away will be $480 – 6 trades x $15 = $390. the $15 is my brokerage trade fees.

Another thing is with 200 shares on both long and short, you are neutrally having 0% at risk, though this is not risk free. The market risks causing oil prices to move will be “neutralize” hopefully, because of the dollar cost averaging as well as hedging involved.

Disclaimer: This is a simple yet a difficult strategy for hedging and neutralizing any market risks. To understand this, you would be required be both an active trader, a sound fundamentalist/economist, and the ability to recognize what are good prices to enter the ETFs trade and such. That, would be harder to blog and would not be covered here.

ps: I am *sometimes* using this strategy myself, so this is very revealing. Though market conditions may change, this is subjected to experience and risk per investor.

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This is an example on how you will use ETFs to trade in commodities, without the use of futures and physical oil contracts

Let’s give 3 scenarios:
1) Perfect and Wonderful scenario. No Hedge involved. You think Oil prices reached its low.

- Entered Long UCO.
- Oil prices increases
- UCO gains
- Sell UCO, locked in Profits
- Oil drops to low again
- Long UCO
- Oil prices increases
- Sell UCO, lock in Profits

Clearly this is the perfect scenario we looking for. As an not so experience trader, we know such things won’t happen. It may happen 2,3,4,5 times. But it ain’t gonna happen forever.

2) Perfect and Wonderful scenario. No Hedge involved. You think Oil prices reached its high.

- Entered Long SCO.
- Oil prices drops
- SCO gains
- Sell SCO, locked in Profits
- Oil increases to high again
- Long SCO
- Oil prices drops
- Sell SCO, lock in Profits

2nd perfect scenario. Being a shorting expert, you know when the demand and supply is, and probably base on reported crude supplies reserves and event driven news, your short works.

3) With Dollar Averaging (Either long or short)

- Entered Long UCO.
- Oil prices increases
- UCO gains
You decided to hold the gains
- Oil drops to low again, UCO stock rice breaks even
- Oil drops further.
- Instead of cutting loss, load the boat, Long more positions of UCO !
- Oil tests for new low for low prices.
- Hold, do nothing (Keeping in mind price movements.)
- Oil prices increases and moves further either by fundamentals or economy
- UCO gains, sell, lock in profits

This is another perfect scenario if you are bullish on Oil prices, but cannot determine the low of Oil, so instead going in at once, you go in in multiple times. Keep in mind Commodities are need for each and every business, and it definitely cannot drop too low too fast, unlike equities for companies.

After mastering this, I’ll blog in my next posts, how to hedge against market risks with the use of the 2 ETFs, as well as using statistical arbitrage to profit risk free.

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As of July 12, Citigroup’s share price has almost broken out of its trading range of $3.70 and $4.10, gearing up for a breakout of share price. This has 2 implications.

1) The volume of block selling of Fed’s Citigroup shares were lesser than buying volume, resulting the share price to inch higher. There weren’t any unusual increase of volume traded suggesting that there aren’t much market movements. Thus it may not be a good sign, since the brokers may resume or increase the liquidation volume once again.

2) Based on EMH Efficient Market Hypothesis, the price we see today had priced in market risk, involving entire market’s movement, the release of Q3 company P&L results, as well as the possible good news in the Finance sector. This will definitely push prices up higher as demand increase for Citigroup.

So what are the signs we can expect to see ? Based on these 2 analysis, I am predicting the general 2-6 weeks price movements.

1) If the volume increases, even before or after the release of earning seasons, there might be a chance of Citigroup share price hitting 5-10% higher than what it is at $4 range. That will be about $4.20 to $4.40, keeping in mind the ongoing block sale.

2) Given the good market and strong Profits for Citigroup, we may see a surge of share price, followed by some cool down period, once again reaching the range of $4.20 and $4.40

Thus it may be a good time to already own some small positions, though I am not suggesting you to bet on it at such a mid-high price, depending on your risk level.

Disclaimer: The author have positions in Citigroup (Public, NYSE:C).