Natural Gas Weekly Fundamental Analysis October 1-5, 2012 Forecast

Introduction: Natural gas is nevertheless a major commodity in its own right, which is used for everything from cooking food to heating houses during the winter. Natural Gas is growing much faster than either of its non-renewable fossil fuel competitors, oil and coal.

Do not miss the weekly U.S. gas inventories report. The figures are issued by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) every Thursday afternoon at 15:30 (released Friday at 15:30 if there was a U.S. bank holiday on Monday). Here’s a link to the latest EIA report. The main natural gas moving figure in there is the change in inventories from the previous week. When it comes to the gas inventories report, we’re talking about billions of cubic feet, Bcf for short.

When the actual change in inventories number is released, it is the deviation from the expected number that is really important. If the actual inventories figure shows a 24 Bcf rise when an 84 Bcf increase was expected, then that is actually positive for the price of natural gas. All else equal, the price of natural gas should rise after the release.

A barrel of oil has roughly 6 times the energy content of natural gas. If the fuels were perfect substitutes, oil prices would tend to be about 6 times natural gas prices. However, due to various market characteristics discussed briefly above and the ease of using oil, the price of oil has been following a pattern of 8-12 times that of natural gas. However that ratio has spiked dramatically since March 2009.

Weekly Analysis and Recommendation:

Natural Gas climbed to recent highs to close the week at 3.313 adding almost 10% this week. The commodity opened the week at 3.058 and added 26 cents in an amazing move. Natural gas prices grinded higher during the making a test of yesterday’s high in the process.

Some traders pointed to an elevated amount of offline US nuclear capacity, currently running about 13% above the five year average, provided a source of support. However, mild US weather forecasts over the next six to 10 days present a headwind for natural gas demand. Yesterday’s EIA storage data showed a larger than expected injection of 80 bcf, which was the largest for the year. Total storage stands at 3,576 bcf or 8.6% above the 5 year average. Over the last four weeks natural gas storage has increased 202 bcf.

FxEmpire provides in-depth analysis for each currency and commodity we review. Fundamental analysis is provided in three components. We provide a detailed monthly analysis and forecast at the beginning of each month. Then we provide more recent analysis and information in our weekly reports and we provide daily updates and outlooks.

Major Economic Events for the week of September 24-28, 2012 actual v. forecast for Euro, GPB, the Franc, and USD

Historical: From 2010 to Present

Highest: 6.106 on Jan 07, 2010

Average: 3.836 over this period

Lowest: 1.903 on April 19, 2012

WEEKLY

• Natural Gas Weekly Update
  Release Schedule: Thursday between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time)
• Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report
  Release Schedule: Thursday at 10:30 (Eastern Time) (schedule)

Economic Highlights of the coming week that affect the Euro, GBP, CHF and the USD

Government Bond Auction

Date Time Country 

Oct 01 10:00 Norway 

Oct 02 09:15 Austria 

Oct 02 09:30 Belgium 

Oct 02 09:30 UK 

Oct 02 14:30 UK 

Oct 03 09:10 Sweden 

Oct 03 10:00 Norway 

Oct 04 08:30 Spain 

Oct 04 08:50 France 

Oct 04 15:00 US 

Oct 05 15:30 Italy