Caveat, I don't fully understand the difference between ETN, ETC and ETF. These are mainly legal differences, but one factor is you get different amounts of counterparty risk. In happy times, this won't make any much (any?) difference, but if banks or funds may be going bankrupt, this may affect your decision, so it's worth looking into.The URL you provide links me to
http://www.etfsecurities.com/csl/lev/et ... #indexThis says the fund is a 200% play on the underlying index, DJ-UBS Natural Gas Sub-Index. I assume you are with me so far.The DJ-UBS Commodity Indexes are described at
http://www.djindexes.com/mdsidx/downloa ... mer.pdfThe table (exhibit 1) shows that there's no intelligent roll strategy. In January, we hold the March future. In February, we hold the March future, rolling over between the 5th to the 10th of the month to the May future. So we always hold the first or 2nd maturity future. Factor #2 (further down that document) clarifies that during backwardation, we will benefit from the 'roll yield' and during contango will will suffer. Nothing in the description of the index implies they do any kind of optimised strategy to avoid being 'infected' by contango, to use your graphic term.For a description of techniques and funds which try to avoid contango negative roll yield issues, see
http://dbfunds.db.com/Pdfs/dbindexguide2007.pdf - Deutsche Bank 'optimised yield' products, which make a good effort at solving the problem.
http://www.ubs.com/4/investch/cmci/pdf/ ... tsheet.pdf - UBS Constant Maturity Commodity Indexes, which aim to solve the problem by diversifying across many maturities, and also by saying 'let the investor choose for themself if they prefer'.