By now, you may have heard of the news of crude oil prices plunging to the negative regions (minus 37.63 US dollars (USD) per barrel, from this news source) due to the drop for its demand in the current COVID-19 situation.
Before assuming that free oil is around the corner (hurrah for vehicle owners), the crude oil market is not as simple as it looks. First, if you read carefully from the same news article, the negative price is for the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) May 2020 futures contract, which had just expired on Tuesday (21st April 2020). The WTI June 2020 futures contract as at the time of my writing was USD 14.57. Oil, being a commodity, is mainly traded through futures, which I had explained the mechanism of it in my ebook1. Because of oil’s low demand, very little buyers would want to take delivery on the batch of WTI...