Here's the idea!

OK, it's finally become clear what needs to happen. But first a precursor:

Recall that at one point I was pimping an ETF called "USO." It's whole thing was that it was going to track the price of oil by going long on crude oil futures. Sounded awesome, so I bought in.

But after watching it, I notices how miserably it failed at its mission. To give you an idea, review my comment (and the corresponding article in seeking alpha) re: DBO (which is basically a carbon copy of USO).

It finally occurred to me - here's what I can do! I can start an ETF where I actually buy and store oil! This is what the GLD ETF does - buys and holds gold bullion. It's behaved quite nicely vs. its benchmark. Gold is of course easier to store, but really - how expensive can it be to store a few thousand barrels of oil in rural Oklahoma? If anyone happens to know - give me a holler!

But just for fun, let's see if I can figure it out:
- It'll obviously be in rural Oklahoma, where CL futures on WTI settle. I'm thinking that'll be something like $5k per month for the facility. Maybe another $5k for storage, $5k for settlement, and $5k for insurance and what-not. That's $20k/month, or $250k/year.
- Let's say this was for 100,000 barrels of oil, costing $12million, that means expenses would be 2% per year. that's not including my cut. Hmm.. that's pretty steep. Still way better than USO and DBO, but still...