Free Investing

Tom Lydon submits:

Natural gas prices and ETFs have languished as supply far outstripped demand – until now. In the last two weeks alone, the largest natural gas ETF is up more than 12%. The United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) has been trading higher nearly every day this week and hitting highs not seen since March, reports John Spence for MarketWatch. The fund is still down around 25% year-to-date, though.Complete Story »

Tom Lydon (ETF Trends) submits: Investors love commodity exchange traded funds, and with good reason. Aside from the usual benefits that ETFs offer, commodity funds deliver the kind of exposure to commodities that would otherwise be very challenging, very expensive or both. But not all commodity funds are created equal, and one of the most important types to understand are those that hold futures contracts. One of the most popular commodity ETF types are those that hold and trade futures contracts for the underlying commodity. Futures are a promise to buy or sell a commodity for a set price on a date that’s in the near future. None of the ETFs that hold futures contracts claim to track the spot price of their respective commodities. [4 Commodity ETF Types.]Complete Story »

Matthew Bradbard submits: The phrase 'March Madness' is coined for the college basketball tournament, but I think it is an accurate description of what to expect as a trader this month. At its highs today, oil was less than $3/barrel from making new highs on the year. Being bearish for the last 1-2 weeks has made our clients no money, but we still feel a trade to $75/76 is imminent. We are not disputing a trade in summer is likely up to $90, but first, a correction. We still favor $5 put spreads. Natural gas should finish down 3.5-4.0% lower on the week. That is not too bad! Clients have a small long position in April futures and June call spreads, and at the moment are all under water. We expect the next 2 weeks to be better to us in energies; that means crude down and natural gas up. Complete Story »

Kurt Wulff (McDep Associates) submits: It is well understood that governments attempt to manipulate prices and we muse whether such an attempt may be under way in natural gas. The price of natural gas acts suspiciously to us, much as oil price did during 1998 when it hit lows most likely never to be seen again. Our political leaders made no bones about manipulating natural gas price from the 1950s through the 1980s, when well-head price controls were the law of the land in the U.S. Today we see a common effort by China and the U.S. to hold down natural gas by the promotion of coal in electrical generation. Influential global power strategists in the two countries may find common cause in holding down the economic development of rival Russia, the world’s largest natural gas producer. For its part, China has stringent price controls on its cleanest fuel while it pollutes the world with massive coal burning. China also appears to be holding Russia’s feet to the fire in negotiating a price for natural gas deliveries from the north. Complete Story »