In the week following the US "Liberation Day", interactions among market participants produced a rare smile-shaped oil futures curve. Independent producers sold June and December contracts, while consumers and physical speculators bought farther-dated ones. As prices collapsed, some financial speculators unwound long positions, but others entered long–near/short–far spread positions to capitalize on front-end backwardation, effectively serving as counterparties to substantial consumer buying at the far end of the curve. The backwardation at the front-end reinforced market resilience and prevented the kind of large-scale unwinding by financial speculators that had occurred in 2008.
