On April 20th, 2020, something happened that economists had said was mathematically impossible…
The price of oil went negative.
As in, sellers were paying buyers $37.63 to take a barrel of oil off their hands.
Meaning people who owned oil contracts that day didn't just lose money. They actually owed money.
I want to come back to that story in a moment, because there's a very good reason it's relevant right now.
You see over the weekend, while traditional commodity markets were closed… crypto traders on an exchange called Hyperliquid were already betting on the direction of oil prices.
WTI crude perpetual futures (contracts that let you speculate on oil prices 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with extreme amounts of borrowed money) shot up to over $100 a barrel on a Saturday evening, roughly 20 hours before mainstream markets even opened.
These contracts give traders access to extreme leverage that can amplify profits, or wipe out their entire investment.
A Wall Street Journal article this week framed this as the exciting future of investing.
Round-the-clock markets with geopolitical events you can react to in real time… aka no more waiting for Monday morning.
And sure, I get the appeal.
But I want you to hold that thought alongside what happened in April 2020, because the two stories are more connected than they appear.
Back then, oil markets were in chaos. The pandemic had cratered global demand almost overnight. Nobody was flying. Nobody was driving. Factories had shut down.
Most importantly… physical oil storage was running out of space.
So traders who were holding oil futures contracts were suddenly faced with a problem - if they didn't sell before expiry, they'd have to take physical delivery of actual barrels of crude oil. Which they obviously couldn't do…
So they sold at any price, including prices below zero.
Retail investors who had piled into oil ETFs and futures earlier that year, thinking they were buying the dip on a beaten-up commodity, got obliterated.
The United States Oil Fund ETF (USO), one of the most popular ways for everyday investors to get exposure to oil, lost more than 80% of its value between January and April 2020.
Many regular folks who thought they were participating in a no-brainer trade had their accounts wiped to zero.
The key word in all of this is leverage.
Especially when you mix leverage with low liquidity like many of these weekend markets do…
Because it’s a quick way for unsuspecting investors to get their accounts destroyed.
Oil is one of the most geopolitically sensitive commodities on the planet.
It moves on wars… drone strikes… OPEC meetings… US strategic reserve decisions, and the occasional unexpected Trump post on Truth Social.
The danger of that last one was made clear on October 10th, when an unexpected social media post from Trump announcing tariffs against China erased billions of dollars in leveraged trades in seconds.
Now layer 24/7 trading and borrowed money on top of that, and you have a recipe for exactly the kind of account-destroying event that ends people's investing careers before they've really begun.
Speculating on oil using leveraged futures contracts is a different game entirely from investing. One requires you to be right about price direction… timing…. AND right about how much leverage you can handle before a margin call forces you out.
Get any one of those wrong and the position closes itself, usually at the worst possible moment.
Most retail investors chasing these trades aren't sitting at a Bloomberg terminal with a risk team behind them. They're watching oil prices move on their phone at 11pm on a Saturday, making decisions that professional traders spend careers learning to get right.
Which brings me to something worth your time in May…
I'm running Investormania 2 in Tampa, Florida (May 14-16, 2026).
Three days with serious investors who have decided that reacting to every geopolitical headline is not a strategy.
So if you want a clearer, more deliberate approach to growing your portfolio, this is the room to be in.
Oliver