The collapse in the price of oil is a huge source of anxiety for many financial market participants. I suppose that's understandable.
Investors have been very excited for the past several years about the promise of tight oil, which is extracted by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rock formations where oil is present. This was a powerful, simple story that asset managers and the financial media could understand, since oil is something that almost everyone uses. The fracking boom lured trillions of dollars in investment, and domestic oil output soared, pushing the United States close to energy independence and lowering demand for imports from big crude producers.
With the recent dive in oil prices, that all seems like ancient history now.