There isn’t a common theme really because these things are nothing alike. Oil crashed because there was a glut and that toxic sludge needs special infrastructur

There isn’t a common theme really because these things are nothing alike. Oil crashed because there was a glut and that toxic sludge needs special infrastructure to store it. You can store a million dollars of gold in a suitcase. A million dollars of oil at $10/barrel (the price right before the crash) is 3.5 million gallons of oil that has to be stored somewhere. And on a physical delivery futures contract you’ve agreed to take that delivery. 99.999% of oil traders are incapable of taking or providing delivery for settlement because of this and what you witnessed was nobody wanting to get caught holding the bag.