The United States Oil Fund was sitting on more than $700 million in unrealized losses at the end of March, several weeks before the market fully grasped the outsize role it would play in this month’s unprecedented collapse in the price of front-month oil contracts.
US crude oil futures plunged to -$37.63 a barrel on April 20, the first time in history the contract traded in negative territory. Exchange-traded products like USO, along with other investors, were caught holding positions that would have required them to take delivery of crude barrels with few places to put it, leading to a panicked sell-off.
