https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy ... y-n1188351
You have paper transactions for crude which are done by some ETFs,” he said. Contracts roll over from month to month, ordinarily without much fanfare, since prices don’t fluctuate substantially in the short term.
Glickman also suggested that the escalating nature of the day’s losses was due in part to algorithmic trading programs responding to earlier decreases, creating a negative feedback loop.
“The fact that oil prices went negative for the front month is reflective of paper transactions,” Glickman said.
But even though oil companies aren’t literally paying buyers to take their oil, this distortion of the market still presents a sobering real-world picture of supply and demand for oil.