Exchange-Traded Scare: US Natural Gas Fund... The Split (UNG)

The exchange-traded product of the United States Natural Gas Fund, LP (NYSE: UNG) has been controversial. Most active investors thought the exchange-traded product was basically buying exposure to natural gas price moves.  Time has relegated it to an eroding asset where its trust invests in futures contracts on natural gas traded on the NYMEX that is the near month contract to expire.  So what happens when Yahoo! Finance (and selectively on broker systems) suddenly shows a 102% gain on the day when you know that natural gas hasn’t risen 100%?

The United States Natural Gas Fund, LP effected a two-for-one reverse unit split after the close of trading on Tuesday and the and post-split units began trading this morning.  Of course this did not just exactly happen overnight.  The reverse-split was announced in a press release on February 16, 2011.

As a result of the reverse-split, each two pre-split units automatically were exchanged for one post-split unit.  In short, 100 old units were converted into 50 new units.  The price roughly doubled as well to reflect the higher price, hence the lag on Yahoo! today.  This is no criticism of Yahoo! because this often happens in split and reverse split shares and units.  It also happens much more frequently around dividend ex-dates in shares, funds, and units.  Frankly, these are exchange discrepancies more than errors.  The reason for the change is that there was a change in CUSIP numbers to 912318110.

Before the reverse-split there were 447,200,000 units outstanding with a net asset value of $5.16; now there are 223,600,000 units outstanding and the adjusted net asset value was increased to $10.31.

After looking around elsewhere at other financial sites, there were more discrepancies out there in the trading ranges and average volume, and more.

JON C. OGG