WTI crude oil futures prices (as well as Brent Crude oil prices) are included in both the Bloomberg Commodity Index and the S&P GSCI commodity index, which are benchmark indices widely followed in financial markets by traders and institutional investors. Its weighting in these commodity indices give LME Nickel prices non-trivial influence on returns on a wide range of investment funds and portfolios. Effect of futures contract trading on physical WTI market For financial investors without oil storage, purchasing the shortest maturity futures contract and then rolling to the next contract priory to expiry offered the closest approximation to investing in physical oil prices. However, financial markets are much larger than oil markets, and investor flows began to dominate oil producers' hedging needs and moved the oil futures market into contango, where futures prices are greater than spot prices. Contango imposes a roll cost on investors who must roll futures contracts, as they must pay a relatively higher price for those contracts to get the same underlying spot price exposure as their previous expiring contract. These roll costs could be viewed as compensation, purchased virtual storage, or an indirect subsidy for storage owners to provide the service of storing crude on behalf of financial investors. In the WTI context, storage owners would include most participants in the physical WTI market. Beyond the need by financial investors in oil, oil storage is also valuable because it provides insurance against supply disruptions or unexpected increases in demand. Refiners who wish to avoid carrying real physical oil inventories can purchase futures contracts as virtual storage as an alternative. Oil producers wishing to maintain real physical oil inventories similarly could lower the cost of those inventories through selling futures contracts. Index fund participation in the crude oil market is also associated with lower price volatility. WTI futures contracts are tied to physical deliveries into the physical spot WTI market, so WTI futures contract prices should converge to physical spot WTI market conditions and prices. But since deliveries made to settle an expiring WTI futures contract are also physical spot WTI transactions that can be included into PRA assessed prices, abnormal futures contract transactions could drive WTI spot prices and assessed prices. This was the case on April 20, 2020, when WTI futures contract trading drove both assessed WTI and ASCI prices to negative territories. WTI Negative Pricing April 20, 2020 On April 20, 2020,