It would appear that the combination of the last day of trading for the March futures contract and some earlier concerns (via CAT) over global growth are enough to warrant a huge block of selling in the April futures contract for WTI crude. Of course, the now standard rumor of a commodity fund liquidation is doing the rounds - 'standard' in so much as whenever there is a sudden unexplained sharp sell-off in the commodity space it is trotted out. As an aside, this drop in WTI perfectly recouples it with gold -1.7% on the week. It appears, as Nanex notes [5], that this 'two-second 2500 contract block' ~$250mm plundering of all resting market orders then caused CME to halt trading for 10 seconds. Human? hhmm
... as we tweeted
In the New Normal when one is dumping WTI, one does not use VWAP but makes sure entire bid stack is taken out with market order
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 20, 2013 [6]
April Futures plunge on huge volume...
and Brent follows WTI... as the spread widens...


