Barclays Oil Sale Triggers a Huge Number of Trades in Exotic Options
- 48 million barrels of WTI options trade early London time
- Transactions were consistent with transfer of a bank’s book
An oil pumping jack, also known as a 'nodding donkey,' stands in an oilfield operated by Bashneft PAO in the village of Otrada, 150kms from Ufa, Russia, on Saturday, March 5, 2016. Bashneft is an upstream and down stream oil & gas provider which explores, produces and refines its own oil and gas which it extracts from brownfield reserves in the Russian Federation.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergBarclays Plc sold the last part of its oil book to an unidentified buyer, triggering a surge in trading of exotic options written in the era of higher crude prices, according to people familiar with the matter.
The sale was signaled by several large options trades at 9:35 a.m. on Monday in London in some of the world’s major oil markets including West Texas Intermediate crude, where 48 million barrels of contracts changed hands. That represents more than a quarter of the entire volume on an average trading day.