Oil below $40 a barrel doesn't seem far-fetched

It’s come to this for the beleaguered oil market: a big bet that prices are about to sink to their lowest level in more than a year. About $7 million worth of options changed hands Friday that will pay off if West Texas Intermediate crude falls beneath $39 a barrel by mid-July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. WTI, which hovered around $46 Friday, hasn’t traded below $39 since April 2016, though it’s been dropping like a stone in recent weeks.

More than 14,000 August $39 puts changed hands, almost 20 times the number of contracts previously outstanding for the bearish