Impacts of CME Changing Mechanism for Allowing Negative Oil Prices on Prices and Trading Activities in the Crude Oil Futures Market

This study investigates and compares the effects of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Chicago mercantile exchange (CME)’s negative price suggestion on prices and trading activities in the crude oil futures market to discuss the cause of negative crude oil futures prices. Through event studies, the empirical results show that the COVID–19 pandemic no longer impacts crude oil futures prices in April, 2020 after controlled market risk, while the CME’s negative prices suggestion can explain the crude oil futures price changes around and even after April 8, 2020 to some degree. Moreover, this study uncovers anomalies in prices and trading activities by analyzing returns, trading volume, open interest, and illiquidity measures using vector autoregressive (VAR) models. The results imply that CME’s allowing negative prices strengthens the price impact on trading volume and makes illiquidity risk matter. This study’s results coincide with the following lawsuit evidence of market manipulation.