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.
Sorry, I'm not trying to say that these things are alike. I'm more curious about the socioeconomic that drive these commodities in different ways. I guess since everyone is telling me that they are different means this point didn't come across. I thought it was obvious since they didn't move in the same manner and I was pointing out different effects to begin with.
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.