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Comment by CountSessine | Hacker News Reader

So does this mean that without bids there are potentially many traders, not refiners or tank farms, holding those contracts still? That those traders will get stuck with taking delivery because they couldn't unload their contracts?

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Yes

People with just a paper office, used to deal in numbers rather than anything physical, and with no place to store physical goods, will now have to figure out where and how to store lots of oil?

They would if they didn’t offload the contracts somehow, hence the negative prices. They are paying to get rid of that obligation.

No. Their prime brokers will force them to sell it at the low (negative) price.

They already know how to store lots of oil. They can and do rent supertankers for example.

Having worked in the finance industry my entire career, most (responsible) firms have means for dealing with taking physical delivery. Less responsible firms, not so much and may be royally screwed if they have to take delivery. I've heard anecdotally of a firm that had to take physical delivery of a shipment of coal. They didn't have plans in place, but because they had an address on a river, the coal arrived via barge. No, I don't recall the name of the firm, and yes, it's just an anecdote/hearsay.

As told on the Daily WTF: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/special-delivery

That story, or at least a very similar one is documented on the the daily WTF:

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery

I've no idea if it is true, but it makes for a funny story at least.

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