Couple things happened today -
1. As of last week, the etf USO held approx 25% of May contracts. An ETF can't take delivery of oil, obviously. Someone somewhere lost their job over this, probably multiple people. Since expiry is tomorrow USO was unwinding into a long squeeze and just getting donkey dicked. This move was not organic and suddenly every trader in the world woke up today and finally realized there is no demand and no storage.
2. Concurrently, both our brokers, CME and Barclays were unable to execute buy orders at negative values. The software was not programmed on EITHER EXCHANGE to allow purchases for negative values. So in the span of 15 minutes or so I watched the price freefall once it broke zero down to -$35. I have to imagine that problem was not limited to our brokers. There will be massive lawsuits after this.
Just for funzies i have a picture of my screen when the spreads were >$60 and flat price was -$35. Maybe I'll get it framed once this shit is over.