Today will go down in history. The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil plunged into negative territory. One contract sold for a jaw-dropping negative $37.36 a barrel. That's more than $50 below where WTI contracts traded last Friday.
Usually, price action like that would put enormous pressure on oil stocks. However, most barely budged, all things considered. Shares of oil giants ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Chevron (NYSE: CVX), for example, were only down about 5% by the mid-afternoon. Meanwhile, even financially troubled oil companies such as Helix Energy Solutions (NYSE: HLX), Matador Resources (NYSE: MTDR), Northern Oil & Gas (NYSEMKT: NOG), and SM Energy (NYSE: SM) only sold off by about 10%.
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