This little-known ETF is up over 600% amid U.S.-Iran war, a better trade than oil or energy stocks

As geopolitical tensions ripple through global energy markets and a deal to end the U.S.-Iran war remains elusive, oil prices have soared, but there's an even better trade on energy volatility that investors have flocked to: the cost of moving crude. The Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF ( BWET ), a little-known exchange-traded fund tied to crude oil tanker freight rates, has surged more than 600% year-to-date as war and disruption in key maritime corridors drive shipping rates sharply higher. "I started getting a lot of questions about this ETF, like, what is up with it? What kind of performance is this?" Cinthia Murphy, VettaFi director of research, said on this week's CNBC's "ETF Edge." BWET is a $30 million portfolio that launched in May 2023, in an ETF market that has over $13 trillion in assets. Murphy explained the scale of the move has forced the market to rethink where the real leverage in energy resides. Rather than focusing only on oil prices, which have been extremely volatile this year, investors may be looking toward infrastructure that the world relies on to move energy commodities. "It really is a story about shipping costs," Murphy said. "Anytime you have some big disruption to shipping ... …