This will clear up any misinformation posted on this board. ETNs are debt instruments. When you buy them, you usually become a senior unsecured creditor of the company issuing them. The DXO ETN gives you exposure to Deutsche Bank (DB), who is supposedly offsetting the ETN's bet on oil by making a trade in the oil futures market. DB is "guaranteeing" that the DXO ETN's price will mimic the price of their double long oil index. If DB was to go bankrupt, all the ETN holders would have to join the foodfight for claims on their assets. All of the posters on here that claimed that Powershares was "credit worthy" are severely misunderstanding what they are doing. The counterparty is DB, not Powershares. By contrast, an ETF is like a mutual fund. Its a legally separate entity that buys and sells assets. There is no legal connection to another entity other than when it makes trades with counterparties. So, take for example UCO, which is similar to DXO but its an ETF. Its issued by Proshares, but if Proshares goes bankrupt the ETF holders don't care that much because there is a portfolio behind the fund. The ETF shares are claims on that portfolio (not on Proshare's assets). However, the fund may engage in transactions with counterparties. If those counterparties go bankrupt, you get screwed. The only way to completely avoid counterparty risk is to trade oil futures yourself.
This possibility of DB going under, however remote or real, is why I like daytrading with DXO and DTO and not holding them overnight. A nice thing about DXO is that with the shares up to such a high level (currently $233), it costs me $1 at most with IB to buy 100 shares of it. Nice for daytrades. I bought and sold it dozens of times today for scalps and it was very profitable. Also to correct another poster above, DXO uses the July futures contract (which expires 6/22/09), not the June contract.