Saw a story where some oil at auction went for -$.19/bbl. That is, the buyer was PAID to take the oil off of seller's hands. (Probably to make room for higher price product, but still... )
I'm actually in on this one. This is typical Trump bullshit where his abject ignorance of pretty major concepts like U.S. anti-trust laws and his narcissistic inability to realize his own ignorance led him to make an offer that he can't possibly follow through on. No way in hell ever are U.S. oil producers are going to be allowed to collude to prop up prices...the height of his ignorance is that the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in large part specifically to break up the Standard Oil monopoly in the first place!
Maybe, just maybe key oil producers no longer make money from producing and selling actual oil so why not make that money from the markets instead ? Awfully lot of interventions over the past years. Makes one wonder...
One day you think oil to 12 bucks because of the crisis we are in and the next I'm thinking once they lift this quarantine and everyone is back to work and some opec russia deal is made oil could be $35-$40. So it's very hard to gauge at the moment.
It wouldn't be terribly hard to trace that money if it was really happening. You gotta remember, Saudi Aramco has a market cap even today of over $6T. Sometimes if you've got the money literally bubbling out of the ground at your feet, simply selling it is the easiest way to make money. I trade because it's fun and challenging, it's far easier for me to make money running my business.