Yılın En İyi Performans Gösteren ETF'si Artmaya Devam Ediyor

The Best-Performing ETF of the Year Just Won't Stop Going Up

Wed, August 12, 2026 at 7:45 AM GMT+3 3 min read

The Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF (BWET) hit another all-time high, pushing its year-to-date gain to 1,659%. $10,000 put into the fund on the first trading day of the year would be worth about $175,900 today.

But BWET doesn't just have the best return of any ETF in 2026. It is the best by a distance that makes the rest of the leaderboard look ordinary. The GraniteShares 2x Long DELL Daily ETF (DLLL) sits second at 732%, less than half of BWET's gain, and the Direxion Daily MU Bull 2X Shares (MUU) is third at 419%, close to a quarter of it.

Both of those are leveraged single-stock funds designed to move twice as much as the stocks they track. BWET uses no leverage at all.

Oil Is Off Its Highs

What makes the run strange is that the rest of the energy complex has stopped going up. WTI crude trades around $82 a barrel, well off its April peak, as the on-again-off-again US-Iran war and the negotiations to end it keep prices volatile.

The United States Oil Fund (USO) is up 85% this year, a big number, but down from a gain that reached about 120% at its peak. The United States Brent Oil Fund (BNO) is up 80%, and the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE), which holds oil stocks, is up 38%.

All of them are below their highs for the year, yet BWET is making new ones.

The ETF Tracks The Cost of Moving Oil

BWET holds freight futures, contracts that settle against the price of chartering a tanker on a specific route. In the fund's case, it's primarily the route between the Middle East Gulf and China.

That route runs through the Strait of Hormuz, and with the strait effectively shut to most commercial traffic for months, the cost of the voyage has gone vertical.

The index BWET's largest contracts settle against, known as TD3C, is assessed daily by a panel of shipbrokers at the London-based Baltic Exchange, and it prices a voyage loading at Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia, inside the strait.

With almost no ships making that trip, panelists have been pricing comparable voyages from ports outside the strait and adding a premium for the risk of going in.

Commodity trader Mercuria sued the Baltic Exchange in April over the practice, arguing the benchmark stopped reflecting a functioning market and cost it hundreds of millions of dollars on contracts that settled against it.

The Baltic says it followed its own governance rules and that the lawsuit is what is unsettling the market. A 15-day trial was fast-tracked and begins in London on October 26.

Almost Nobody Was Along for the Ride

Despite the eye-popping performance in BWET, few investors have benefited from it. The ETF started the year with under $2 million in assets. It peaked near $65 million in April, fell back to about $15 million in June, and now sits in the $40 million range.

There are a few explanations for why investors have shunned the fund. Freight rates are famously mean-reverting, and every previous spike has eventually reversed, so by the time the move was obvious, it looked late.

Part of it is also the complexity of the product. BWET charges 3.5% and is structured as a commodity pool rather than a conventional ETF, which means a K-1 at tax time and potential tax liability on the fund's gains even for investors who haven't sold.

Still, for the few investors who did climb aboard early, the tax bill is a small price for the best return in the market this year.

Permalink | © Copyright 2026 etf.com. All rights reserved