Historic Drop in Oil Price

:sunglasses: good

That’s an understatement. Professional commodity traders lose 80 to 95% of the time. Marc Rich was one of the last successful ones but he was quite a manipulator and did whatever he needed to do, legal or not to make a buck. In that way he was ahead of his time in scale of corruption. During the Iran oil embargo he snuck out oil with John Fredicksen and even helped keep oil flowing to Israel from Iran. He paid a LOT of bribes for all manner of commodities. He changed the world of commodity trading.

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Worse with USO. That contango is a feature of the note. Every month, at rollover, they sell low and buy high. Even if the spot price remained at a steady price, you would still lose money. Systematically.

and electric cars sales go…

Here’s a place to store oil from free future contracts if Congress approves?

I bet oil goes up 200% in the next week! But then I tried to short the WTI at $1.00 yesterday…

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This is beyond me but the link Krugman provides here may be of interest.

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1252567966031495168

Googling Cushing …

We have only to look at the price of Brent crude, the widely-used European benchmark, to see that things aren’t so bad after all. Prices for Brent futures fell around 5% Monday to approximately $27 a barrel. That’s not far off from where the price was last Thursday. In other words, Brent futures traders more or less shrugged when WTI futures hit the skids.

From here:

In simple terms, the flexibility of the Brent futures contract means that lack of storage in one place isn’t forcing traders to dump futures contracts in the way that it is with WTI futures.

It was only the WTI futures for May delivery that reached negative territory, while Brent, the other bench mark crude stayed positive (although low) June and July futures looks better, but not good, for both.

There are more than one explanation for the difference between the two bench mark. The one by Forbes in the link posted by KBC is good.
The lesson in this one is good too:

An Editorial in last weeks The Economist looks at it from a more historical and international point of view :

BTW: There are many different types of Crude Oil and LNG being sold in the market, at different prices and terms. Here is a watch lust for those who are into trading in the commodities:

Seadrill :slight_smile:

Re: ombugge - Cushing.

Since there is no place to store the stuff what’s the utility of a futures contract for oil? There’s no reason to believe this situation will appreciably improve in the near future. There’s a lot of counter party contagion risk which will likely result in quite a few bankruptcies as long as the “free market” is allowed to work. The scary thing is it is very possible the too big to fail banks don’t have enough reserves to cover their counter party risks as bond ratings fall which will demand payments be made to cover the increased risk… Remember in the USA, commodity futures contracts, derivatives and various synthetic instruments of financial BS are not regulated by the CFTC so no one knows how many billions if not trillions of dollars these guys have gambled. In 2009 it was proposed that they be regulated but they got that stopped. It should be an interesting month or two.

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There must be somewhere to store at least 75 Mill. Bbls.?

Maybe in the swimming pools at Trumps clubs and hotels?
(Those 18 small holes at the golf courses don’t hold much oil)

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Trump’s administration is also making noises about China not buying oil from the USA like they promised in the new trade deal. Not sure what he thinks China can do with the stuff as they are in a recession, have no place to put it and I’m sure there is a force majeure clause in that deal. There is also talk of paying the oil producers to keep the stuff in the ground. Hardly free market as the taxpayer would be on the hook for it but “free markets” are a joke. Oil is an international commodity let the all knowing international oil producers sink or swim in the stuff. The rest of the world will buy oil from whoever is left after this pandemic eases, when people go back to work and there is a need to use oil.

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Changes are being made to USO’s structure. There is another product called USL They spread the money over 12 months of futures contracts.

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Got to ready Proxies and Prospectuses. :rofl:

Game over.

Super contango is our friend.

According to data reviewed by the WSJ, some 100 of the 815 VLCCs available globally were booked during the 12 days to April 21, with average daily freight rates at $150,000. That’s compared with $10,000 a year earlier, according to shipper Frontline.

Would be smart to get oil that cheap to fill the reserve. Lotta stuff going

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Should that be T/C Rates (per day)

No wonder Jon Fredriksen looks gloomy these days. At that rate he can hardly afford lunch at Theaterkafeen when he visit Oslo.
(Not to mention the ol’ boys meetings at his regular table there)

I think it would beneficial to all involved but wouldn’t be surprised if someone or a party objected to it. I think the logistics would be pretty simple as well since the different reservoirs are already connected to the grid. Open up some valves, kick on some pumps & free up some space.

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Sadly, there will always some disagreement. May even help out on the price for all involved taking some of that oil off the market. It’s a win for USA.

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The Dept. of Energy has conveniently mapped the location of the reservoirs in case our enemies would like to bomb them.