Oil price falls: Who were the winners and losers?
Supply and demand issues have hit funds hard
This week has given investors yet another opportunity to use the word 'unprecedented', following the WTI crude price freefalling into negative double digits last Monday (20 April).
Oil producers began paying buyers for barrels due to storage concerns as the pandemic-induced lockdown has weighed heavily on consumption.
As discussed on the front page of this week's magazine, this will have significant ramifications for investors; particularly those who have tried to take advantage of the dip by buying into oil price ETFs.
Morningstar's Kenneth Lamont explained the "idiosyncrasies" of the crude futures market mean investors could see the value of their investment eroded, even if the oil price recovers.
On the active side, Willis Owen's Adrian Lowcock warned some emergency steps could be rolled out in order to prevent a rout on energy-focused funds.
The ramifications extend far further than oil and energy-focused vehicles. According to data from FE fundinfo, 547 out of 4,042 funds in the Investment Association universe have some direct exposure to the oil & gas sector, while more than 100 have at least a 10% weighting.
Of these, 61 of the funds reside in the IA UK All Companies or IA UK Equity Income sectors, which is no surprise given oil and gas is the largest sector weighting in the FTSE 100 index and accounts for a significant proportion of its dividend yield.
Portfolio manager at Morningstar Mark Preskett told Investment Week that a distinction needs to be made between funds investing directly in oil futures and those that are investing in energy companies.
"With the former, an investor is exposed to liquidity risk, and also vagaries of the speculative oil futures market, and receives no dividend or earnings stream," he explained.
"With the latter, an investor is able to make conservative assumptions on cash flows, earnings and dividend coverage, under a variety of long-term oil price scenarios."
It could even be some sectors outside the oil and gas space that could be harder hit, according to Argonaut's Barry Norris.
The manager is avoiding long positions in the airline sector - and not for the obvious reason that planes are not flying any more.
"A lot of airlines have been typically hedging their fuel through holding reserves - and this is jet fuel rather than crude oil, so it is a processed by-product of crude, and is therefore less liquid in investment terms but still highly correlated to crude movements," he said.
"These airlines have all been locking in the oil price through contracts at much higher prices. If crude dropped to zero or even $10 per barrel, they would suffer spectacular losses and they have no offsetting benefit; they are not even using any fuel because they are not flying the planes."
He added: "A collapse in the futures contract of oil may well cause even more losses in the airline sector than the impact not flying any planes is having."
While it is easy for investors to focus on the producers and manufacturers of oil, it is clear a fall in price will create winners and losers across almost every sector.
But as the past two months have shown us, markets and the underlying forces driving them do not always pan out as investors would expect.
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