By Jeff Thompson… Monday, April 20, 2020, made history. Crude oil for the first time ever traded negative on the NYMEX futures contract. Crude oil has traded negative on occasion for physical barrels off the NYMEX. In those cases of negative trading for physical barrels, it typically is a high-sulfur grade oil that cannot be easily refined. The underlying issue for off NYMEX negative crude oil trading and NYMEX negative trading is the same, storage. Typically, when a crude oil contract is getting ready to expire, a few days to a week before expiration, the market starts to work down the open interest in the contract. The open interest is simply the number of contracts outstanding for the contract month. Most of the time, with...