Speculators are piling into complex crude options this week, in a bet the market is going to tumble later this year on an expected slowdown in refinery demand and robust oil inventory levels. Some 8,200 lots of bearish calendar-spread options were executed on Tuesday over the remainder of the third quarter, the fourth quarter and into the first quarter of 2016 in the over the counter market, according to CME Group’s daily bulletin on Wednesday. The contracts can go days without a single trade, so the rush was unusual. Those trades included puts, put spreads and fences, dealers say, with strike prices at negative 50 and negative 75 cents. Five hundred puts also traded at a negative $3.00 strike price for the August/September and September/October contracts. Since the end of April, the front to second month spread has strengthened by nearly 80 percent. On Wednesday, the spread […]