I spent yesterday afternoon talking to oil traders about how to get some of this sweet sweet oil and learned that all of this is much dumber than I ever imagined https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epgejn/why-is-the-oil-price-negative-and-can-you-buy-some-an-explainer

I promise this will answer your questions, such as "how many swimming pools do I need to store the oil" and "where do we buy the guillotines" better than any Bloomberg or NYTimes explainer will

Basically what has happened is a bunch of investors who do not know what they'd do should they get stuck with thousands of barrels of oil are panic selling before they get stuck with that oil at 2:30 pm today, because there is no demand for oil and no one is buying

if they get stuck with the futures contracts they've bought they have to literally go pick up the oil in oklahoma, which is a problem for a bunch of jackasses in suits, so they are paying people to take it for them.

demand has fallen because of coronavirus but supply has not, and now oil producers are playing a game of chicken because no one wants to turn off their wells (which costs money) and so we're approaching a situation where pipelines might become "full" which is dangerous and bad

other things i learned: apparently futures traders sometimes get stuck with 1,000 barrels of oil or 1,000 hogs or a bunch of corn that they must figure out something to do with, which is very funny to me

it costs $100,000 to get a membership to have the privilege to buy oil direct from the market, and you also must be "an adult possessing good moral character, a good reputation, business integrity..."

buddy,,,,

the takeaway is not "oil is worthless" it's that capitalism is