no one trading oil - why, page-109

The previous post is absolutely correct and it's important that investors understand what they are buying. I had similar questions about OOO and so went searching Betashares blog and found a blog post from March that explains what's happening  (see "Crude Oil Ahead of the Curve"). Bottom line is that it is isn't possible for anyone to directly invest in spot oil and so investment products use futures based indices - by definition these don't track the spot oil price but rather a futures index. it still has a very high correlation to spot oil but it does not track the spot oil exactly.  the differences are due to the potential for contango and backwardation in the futures index based on prevailing market conditions

that said, you can certainly use OOO to speculate on the oil prices directionally. For example in the month of September it was up 6.5% (albeit oil prices were up over 10%). the reason for the difference has nothing to do with problems in the product but the cost of contango in the futures price.