JustDario 🏊♂️@DarioCpx
Crude oil prices collapsed and briefly went negative in April 2020 (for the May delivery contract) because of a perfect storm: demand for oil plummeted while supply stayed high, and there was almost nowhere left to store the extra oil.
⚠️ 6 years later another perfect storm, but the complete opposite, can potentially happen with oil prices suddenly skyrocketing
🚩 NYMEX WTI (CL) is a deliverable contract with trading terminating 3 business days before the 25th calendar day of the month prior to the contract month.
🚩 The Current May OI for the NYMEX WTI May26 futures is ~300k or 300m barrels begins to settle on the 22nd of April.
🚩 So far the request for physical delivery of Oil futures contracts has been limited compared to the whole OI, however, because WTI is trading at a forced low price by the government while premiums in other markets, especially in Asia, are already much higher, this can prompt a sudden spike in physical deliveries in NY when delivery notices are issued to compensate for the immediate supply shortage in the rest of the world where the oil price is already much higher (making the “cheap” WTI very attractive) rather than most of the OI being rolled forward by longs as usual.
🚩 Differently from gold and especially silver, where the Comex (another subsidiary of CME) successfully avoided a physical squeeze so far with many shenanigans (including pulling the plug from the servers twice), the NYMEX might not be able to do the same in a situation where buyers cannot postpone physical deliveries no matter the monetary incentives offered.
Perhaps, this is the reason why the chairman of the CME already warned the US government to refrain from manipulating down the oil futures market. A warning, of course, completely ignored.