The first week of 2011 started off with major energy commodities and precious metals rising. The main gainer is natural gas spot price (NY city gate) that rose yesterday by 15.7%, followed by natural gas spot price (Henry Hub) that rose by 7.3%, and finally the Nymex Henry Hub Future Prices (futures for February) rose by 5.8%.
Crude oil price showed a moderate rise of less than half percent.
Some consider this rise in crude oil price to be related to the expectations of economic recovery of Europe and U.S. and consequentially expectations for increase in demand for energy, I think it’s a bit premature to make this statement.
Gold and Silver prices also showed a moderate rise as they increased by less than half percent.
These increased could probably be related to the famous January effect.
Notice that US dollar continues to show weakness against the Canadian dollar (to read more about this see here); however the US dollar showed yesterday a very moderate incline compare to the Euro.
A summary of yesterday’s Prices Changes:
The following table presents the main descriptive data from last business day – January 3rd, for precious metals, energy commodities and exchange rates. The table includes: settled prices, daily percent change, and quantitative change in US dollars (except for USD/CAD, in which the change is in Canadian dollars):
For further reading:
- Gold and Silver Prices Review – weekly recap Jan 1st (in this site)
- Crude oil price & Natural gas spot price – Weekly recap Dec 27-31 (in this site)
- Monthly recap on Gold prices & Silver prices for December 2010 (in this site)
- Weekly outlook for Crude oil, Natural gas and Gold 3-7 Jan (in this site)