In snowlocked Washington (and looking into the face of another storm), we totally sympathize with natural gas traders who traded the NYMEX futures contract 4 cents down this morning, at $5.361.
"March NYMEX gas falls early Tuesday on anticipation of spring" our headline read, with a bit of uncharacteristic poetry. Anticipation of spring.
Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover told our colleague Cheryl Buchta that traders are usually too early with the anticipation, but today it is "more premature than ever."
"As we have noted before, March is always colder than expected," Beutel said, and "winter has plenty left in it." That's not what we want to hear, but the truth sometimes hurts.
Do keep in mind, Kathy, that the March NYMEX contract trades for the month of March. Though Mr. Beutel does give the unfortunate news that March tends to be colder than we expect, next month (fingers crossed!) should be warmer than February.
To get a better sense of this most recent snowstorm's effect, you can look at next-day natural gas prices in New York (at Transco zone 6) -- yesterday it topped $8/MMBtu in intraday trade and averaged 42 cents higher at $7.74/MMBtu, according to Platts data.
Next-day gas versus next-month gas are two different beasts -- and we'd all like to cling to a little bit of hope that this winter will finally come to an end. :)