There should be no doubt that greed makes people do funny things.
Take investing in oil.
Sure, there’s a lot of companies that truly want to buy oil. To create gas. Asphalt. Lubricants, paint thinners, and dry-cleaning solvents. Charcoal briquettes. Wax birthday candles and crayons. Polyester shirts. Plastic drinking cups, toothbrushes, and hair combs. And so on.
But there are also a lot of people that simply want to trade in oil… without never, ever taking delivery of oil.
These traders have played a rather interesting game. They buy oil contracts. But these contracts actually oblige them to take delivery of oil, because, after all, that’s what they’re buying.
But remember they never, ever really want to take delivery of oil… I mean, where are they going to put it, in their swimming pool?
So the plan is always to sell the contracts before having to take delivery.
That’s the way it’s worked for a long time.
Until this week.
Hoping for a last minute Hail Mary (i.e., something that would spike the price of oil higher), it looks like a group of oil contract holders held on to their contracts a bit too long.
Normally this isn’t a problem. There’s always a buyer at the right price, right?
Not if there isn’t readily available storage for that purchased oil!
And that’s what happened this week. There was no readily available storage… which caught a group of traders with their proverbial pants down. Faced with the prospect of actually having to fill their swimming pools with black oil, these traders literally had to pay companies to take it off their hands.
And, thus, we saw the first NEGATIVE oil prices ever.
It didn’t last long. And it wasn’t for that many contracts. But it was a spectacular flame-out… an absolute spectacle to watch.
The lesson? If you’re an oil trader and there isn’t any oil storage, DON’T WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO GET RID OF YOUR CONTRACTS.
And, except for a few isolated cases, chances are most oil traders won’t come anywhere close to doing that again.
Duh, right?
But, you never know. :)
Royal Blog 