That does not necessarily mean they are not going to make money. At our ETF conference, which was a full room of allegedly sophisticated financial professionals, most of them managing large sums of client money, I was SHOCKED at the level of knowledge on some of these issues.

I guess I shouldn't be. Basically, we've taken institutional-level products and make them widely available to retail and intermediary investors. And many of them don't have a CLUE what they're doing, having no idea of how leverage works, or how futures markets work, for example.

Nik Bienkowski is right that just because there is huge contango in crude futures markets doesn't mean that it will persist, but it's a large hurdle to overcome, and it's one many investors are completely unaware of, as they think they're buying the spot price of oil ... which they AIN'T.

There have been some tough lessons learned in some of the futures- and swaps-based products in the last year. My short story is if you are playing blackjack and you don't know exactly which hand to hit on every time by the odds of the book, you're being a REAL fool with your money. So if YOU DON'T 100% UNDERSTAND THE PRODUCT, DON'T INVEST IN IT. It's honestly as simple as that.

All of these new products, particularly in the commodities space, are a huge boon to savvy retail investors who can finally get access to the asset class at reasonable prices. But either understand what you're doing, or get out of the high-stakes room.