What do you think about the Trump economy, Yas Forums?

People do it all the time

First of all, understand that this is a futures market, meaning that it's basically a market speculating on what already tends to be speculation about price. Despite the speculatory nature of futures markets, they do generally end up being pretty accurate at predicting price.

If the price is negative, that means that people trading these futures are expecting the real value of oil to go below zero. If the equity value of something drops below zero, it would no longer be considered an asset, but would rather be considered a liability. Another way to understand this, would be that a company with investment or ownership of oil would no longer list the value as receivable but instead, list the value as expense.

An analogy to oil being priced below zero can be seen in many services markets. A good example I can think of would be in interviews. People such as former presidents and celebrities earn high amounts of money for giving interviews. However, individuals with little notoriety sometimes end up paying to give interviews so that they can get publicity. Therefore, interviewing is a market where the value of the interviewer can commonly become negative. When we think of oil pricing, it might be odd to think of oil to be valued below zero because historically there has never been such an abundance that someone would pay to get rid of oil. Another market that serves as an example of equity having negative value would be the recycling market. Many people will pay recycling companies to take materials to be recycled. People pay for plastics and metals to be recycled all the time. We could think of something like a used water bottle or aluminum can as having a negative value. So back to oil again, it's been a while now where the oil inside a barrel is actually worth less than the barrel itself. Soon, it will be possible that people will probably consider paying to get rid of oil because storing the oil is more expensive than paying to get rid of the oil.