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The Negative Pricing of the May 2020 WTI Contract

Author

Listed:
  • Adrian, Fernandez-Perez
  • Ana-Maria, Fuertes
  • Joelle, Miffre

Abstract

This paper sheds light on the negative pricing of the May 2020 WTI futures contract (CLK20) on April 20, 2020. The super contango of early 2020, triggered by COVID-19 lockdowns and geopolitical tensions, incentivized cash and carry (C&C) traders to be long CLK20 and short distant contracts, while simultaneously booking storage at Cushing. Our investigation reveals that C&C arbitrage largely contributed to the lack of storage capacity at Cushing in April 2020 and the price crash relates to the reversing trades of many long CLK20 traders without pre-booked storage. Additional aggravating factors included a liquidity crush, staggering margin calls and potential price distortions due to the trade-at-settlement mechanism. The analysis suggests that claims from experts that hold index trackers responsible for the crash are unwarranted: Index trackers did not trigger the negative pricing, nor widen the futures-spot spread by rolling their positions to more distant contracts ahead of maturity.

Suggested Citation

  • Adrian, Fernandez-Perez & Ana-Maria, Fuertes & Joelle, Miffre, 2022. "The Negative Pricing of the May 2020 WTI Contract," MPRA Paper 112352, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Dec 2021.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:112352
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    WTI crude oil futures contract; Negative price; Contango; Cash and carry; Index trackers; Disinformation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy

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