Crude oil not really below $40, yet

Although crude oil futures did close at $36.22, that was for the January futures contract which ceases trading today. Tomorrow, trading switches to the February futures as the front month, which closed at $41.67. Basically, speculators who do not want to actually own the physical oil dumped the January contract today. So, even though oil was well below $40 today, that will not necessarily be the case tomorrow morning.

The February 2009 crude oil futures contract peaked at $148.17 on July 11, 2008. It has declined 71.38% from that peak price.

-- Jack Krupansky