An historic crash in U.S. oil prices to less than zero sent Wall Street tumbling Monday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 592 points – a 2% drop. The S&P 500 was also off 2% and the Nasdaq was down 1%.
Major European indexes in Frankfurt, London and Paris were all up a fraction while Asian markets were mixed.
The contracted May price of a barrel of Texas crude oil slipped to minus $37.63 Monday – a 100% drop.
U.S. refineries are full and cannot store any more product. Demand is way down because hardly anyone can travel.
The price for Brent crude, the benchmark for two-thirds of the world's oil contracts, also dipped, but not nearly as much, off more than 5% to $26.59 a barrel.
The 13-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia and other oil producers, agreed a week ago to start cutting production by 9.7 million barrels a day on May 1, extending through June, in an effort to prop up prices.
But the planned production cut has so far failed to stem the oil price decline.
