When was oil anywhere near zero...your intelligence yes, oil no...
Originally Posted by bb1961
... actually the data he tossed out was a "futures" price for FUTURE delivery if a buyer in the future had the capacity to store the purchased barrels ON THE FUTURE DATE. To be precise WTFdoIknow couldn't buy a barrell for less than market on April 20, 2020, if his Sports Illustrated life depended on it.
Originally Posted by LexusLover
Actually the price of the physical commodity, not just the futures contract, went negative on April 20, 2020. If you had storage capacity at tank farms in the Permian Basin you could "buy" the crude and then take delivery. But instead of paying the seller, the seller would have had to pay you around $30 per barrel. I know an oil operator who tried to get hold of some tanker trucks then and do exactly that.
The price went negative on the day before expiration of the May, 2020 commodities contract. If you had storage capacity in Cushing, Oklahoma then, the delivery point for the contracts, you likewise could have bought contracts and taken delivery of the crude, and the seller would have had to pay you money.
The May contract expired on April 21, at +10.01/barrel. Traders who bought on April 20th and sold on the 21st made a bundle. On the other hand, there were some traders who were on the other side of the trade who lost a lot of money, as well as their brokers, who had not collected sufficient margin funds from the traders because the brokers never in their wildest dreams expected the price would go negative.