tyb
GRZLY39 C-560 out from Miramar and nw and CNV4863 US Navy Clipper from NAS North Island (Coronado).
GRZLY50 C-560 appears to be heading back to Mammoth-Yosemite airport and on descent now at 16k ft near Bishop, CA. He has dropped off scope
GINO48 E-6B Mercury TACAMO on the Lake Erie shore ne of Cleveland
G8624485 Drone came down the Hudson River
it's a drone just can't tell what kind
20 Minutes That Broke the U.S. Oil Market
Frantic sell orders had been pouring in overnight and any traders who connected to the Nymex platform that morning could see a bloodbath was coming. By 7 a.m. in New York, the price on a key futures contract – West Texas Intermediate for May delivery – was already down 28% to $13.07 a barrel.
And then, in a 20-minute span that ranks among the most extraordinary in the history of financial markets, the price cratered to a level that few, if any, thought conceivable. Around the world, Saudi princes and Texan wildcatters and Russian oligarchs looked on with horror as the world’s most important commodity closed the trading day at a price of -$37.63. That’s what you’d have to pay someone to take a barrel off your hands.
While the deeply negative prices of that Monday were largely limited to the U.S., and in particular the soon-to-expire WTI contract for May delivery, the world felt the shockwaves, with ripple effects dragging global prices to the lowest since the late 1990s. Traders are still piecing together the confluence of factors that led to the collapse. And regulators are scrutinizing the issue, according to people familiar with the matter.
USO, into which investors poured $1.6 billion the previous week, hadn’t been holding the May WTI contract on Monday. But the rout sparked a chain reaction in the market that burned these investors, too. By the time Monday April 20 rolled around, most ETFs and other investment products — though not the Crude Oil Treasure fund — had shifted their position out of the May WTI contract into the next month.
The physical settlement for the benchmark WTI takes place at Cushing, Oklahoma. When storage tanks there fill up, the price on the expiring contract can plunge and become disconnected from the global market. With demand evaporating, inventories at Cushing were soaring. In March and April, they climbed 60% to just under 60 million barrels, out of a total working capacity of 76 million –- and analysts reckon much of the remaining space is already earmarked. So on the crucial Monday, the penultimate day of trading in the May WTI contract, there were precious few traders able or willing to take physical delivery.
Much of the market was focused then on the settlement price, determined at 2:30 p.m. in New York. Investment products –- including Bank of China’s –- typically seek to achieve the settlement price. That often involves so called trading-at-settlement contracts, which allow oil traders to buy or sell contracts ahead of time for whatever the settlement price happens to be.
No Buyers. On that afternoon, with trading volumes thin and sellers outnumbering buyers, the trading-at-settlement contracts quickly moved to the maximum discount allowed, of 10 cents per barrel. For a period of around an hour, from 1:12 p.m. until 2:17 p.m., trading in these contracts all but dried up. There were no buyers.
The result was the carnage of that afternoon. At 2:08 p.m., WTI turned negative. And then, minutes later, sank to as low as minus $40.32 before rebounding slightly at the close. Within the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, unpacking what occurred during those final minutes of trading on April 20 has since become top priority, according to people familiar with the matter. While reviews and investigations into what occurred are just beginning, thus far, top officials believe the moves were likely the result of a confluence of economic and market factors, rather than the result of market manipulation.
An issue the CFTC is exploring is whether the storage capacity data posted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration accurately reflected the actual availability of space, two of the people said. “The temporarily negative price at which the WTI Crude futures contract traded earlier this week appears to be rooted in fundamental supply and demand challenges alongside the particular features of that futures product,” CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert told Bloomberg News.
Nonetheless, he added: “CFTC is conducting a deep dive to understand why the WTI price moved with the velocity and magnitude observed, and we will continue to oversee our markets’ role in facilitating convergence between spot and futures prices at expiration.”
The CME, for its part, argues that Monday’s plunge was a demonstration of the market working efficiently. “The markets worked exactly how they’re supposed to do,” CEO Terry Duffy told CNBC
https://energynow.com/2020/04/the-20-minutes-that-broke-the-u-s-oil-market/
The CFTC needs to be drawn and quartered-they had the chance many years ago to put position limits on all traded contracts and as usual..FAILED. Cryin' about it now as if they had no idea this would habben. Fuck them..
Wait until we get to the metals…..
would say we just serve with them.
and they don't have the wholesale gas pricing to point to for an excuse now.
Most stations/local storage facilities had already paid a much higher price for the inventory they had thus reluctant to lower prices.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/prices.php
GRZLY50 C-560 did a fly over at Mammoth Lakes-Yosemite and currently doing fly-bys at Fresno, CA
Int'l with it's code of FAT for Fresno Air Terminal