Archive for April, 2009

Sometimes Oil is Illiquid

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

…at least if you ask Yahoo! finance.

So, the twitter feed sometimes gives erroneous results if the one year, and six month out contracts haven’t seen a trade in a few hours and oil has moved 7% or something since the last tick.

That said, we shorted the updates from 6 months and a year, to 3 months and a 6 months. And, we also added a check, and the tweet will contain a warning:

But, the last trades were > 1 hour ago

If there has been more than an hour since the 3 month or the 6 month contract has traded last. So, you can use your discretion when interpreting the tweet.