If I want to get ride of stocks I offer them for free to a family member (children) and problem is solved. Why should I pay money for that? Stocks will never go negative unless an idiot wants to get ride of them.
Time. You want them gone by yesterday. Your family member doesn't have a broker account. Also they might don't want them even for free. If it is an insider trading allegation, your family member owning it is still a big no-no. Yes, I have just described 3 scenarios when a person would want to pay extra to get ride of the position.
If we are taking in consideration index is aggregate value of its components, then it is no way it comes to zero. It will be replaced one component. Recently M was removed from SP500 f.e. However if you remember anti volatility index was removed it came to zero, not negative.
For stock, it comes to zero. And will be closed look for JC Penny f.e. Company will get bankrupt, position will be closed your position will show zero. XYZ Simbol will be shown like 1234567. Period.
None of my scenarios described the company going bankrupt. I will spell it out for you: When in an illiquid and very low priced stock (we are talking about pennies) you own too many shares and you have to get ride of them very quickly, it makes sense to offer extra (aka negative) value so somebody is willing to take it off of your hands for a FEE. Thus the negative value. I may don't want your penny stock for even half a penny, but if you pay me 2 pennies per stock, we are in business! Got it?
OK, got it. However for all these stock market ages we did not have such occurrence exists right. Also can we make negative price on order. But theoretically your scenario may exists.
For every pricelevel there can be a hypothetical explanation. So theoretically prices can explode too. If we take in account all the possible scenario's it becomes useless to answer the question of the OP because anything is possible. And that would be the only correct answer: anything is possible... Pekelo did speak about stocks, but the question was about INDEXfutures. So everything he posted is irrelevant.
The irony is , that, probably masses/general public thought, that this could never happen with oil. And it - did. The index futures is just another derivative, brought out by Wallstreet geniuses. The whole index, the SnP itself, couldn't go negative, that's irrational ; for it to happen world as we know should cease to exist. But if 1930 scenario would show up, - then why those futures, couldn't go to zero/negative, while SnP would experience ~70% crash ? Futures portrays the future scenarios - so what kind of expectations there would be, with the market being so much down, and real major depression kicking in ? This derivative/product (futures), is just another one of those, created by guys from Wallstreet, to suck in the losers/pigs. They even placed ,,best till'' stamp on it. And general audience still doesn't give a damn, because they want that profit - now. Disclaimer : never traded this product, nor do i will.
Because of company buy backs. If the stock price is hugely undervalued, the companies just start to buy their own stock back and go private. If there is a 30% difference between the future and the index, there has to be some kind of arbitrage that would lock the favorable price in. And I am not sure such a huge difference could exist, because of arbs.