Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, April 21st, and this is your FT news briefing.

Yesterday, US oil prices did something they've never done before. Trade in negative territory.

The F.T.'s Derek Brower explains what caused the dramatic sell-off and what we can

expect next. Then I'll chat with the F.T.'s Neil Hume about how a Singapore oil trader failed to record hundreds of millions of dollars and losses.

Plus the US small business bailout has allowed some much larger companies to secure loans. Now the Trump administration

is feeling the heat for it. And in the UK, more than 1 million people enrolled in the

government staff furlow scheme on day one, the operation. I'm Mark

Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day.

Yesterday's US oil price crash was the culmination of a few factors from the past few weeks.

For one, coronavirus has slashed demand for crude oil.

And then there was the ongoing oil price war between Saudi Arabia

and Russia. Both countries knew there was less demand but didn't agree to cut production

until last week. And then all of a sudden yesterday happened when the bottom just fell out of the market.

That's the F.T.'s U.S. Energy editor Derek Brower.

Yesterday, U.S. Oil Benchmark West Texas Intermediate, treated as low as negative $40.32 a barrel.

It settled at negative $37.63.

Just to put that into perspective, W.T. I closed at about $18 on Friday. It was as high as about $63 a barrel in January.

Derek has more on what happened.

The contract for May delivery of West Texas Intermediate, which is the US oil benchmark.

This contract is due to expire today, and yesterday, very few people wanted to buy it because they perceived that

storage was running out in the US and there wouldn't be anybody willing to take

delivery of the oil if they did hold this contract. So they were just suddenly

...