This week’s streak on the energy commodities continues as the crude oil prices decline for the straight third day in a row. On the other hand, the Natural gas prices continue to rise all through this week, up to now. This time it seems, according to Bloomberg, that vis-à-vis the decline of crude oil prices is not only the Chinese to be blamed with their expected /speculative on raising interest rates, it seems that Europe is also to be blamed for this, because of concerns regarding its debt crisis. The later argument, at least, is not supported by the rise of Euro/USD which is currently at 1.3554 as of 17.02 PM GMT.
Notice that Natural Gas Prices continue to rise as if all speculation relating to crude oil prices doesn’t exist. And does someone remember that there is a quantitative easing plan which is on the way in the US.
There was a post on Forbs regarding the crude oil prices to natural gas price ratio, which could work as an additional tool for investors in deciding how appealing one of these commodities when comparing their prices. Based on this ratio, it is claimed that crude oil prices will rise to 200 USD per barrel. I think while this ratio could serve as a tool to see how these commodities relate, however it’s a long way from using it as a predicting tool for crude oil prices. Furthermore, any rule of thumb that uses one variable (in this case natural gas price) to predict another variable is hard to swallow, and should have a lot of proving to do before accepting any merit. I think it will be a nice future post to consider checking the merit of some of these ratios that are ubiquitous among traders and investors.
Prices:
Here is an update on the prices of main energy commodities for November 17th:
The crude oil price of short term futures, as of 16.56PM GMT, on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), is at 81.45 USD per barrel, which represents a 0.89 dollar decrease or a 1.08% drop.
The WTI spot price is trading as of 16.58PM GMT at 81.52 USD per barrel, a decrease of 1% compare to the previous business day’s rate.
The Dated Brent spot crude oil reached 83.82 USD per barrel – a 0.35 per barrel decline as of 17.07PM GMT.
The Natural Gas prices is on a three day rising streak as the Nymex Henry Hub Future settled yesterday on 3.82$ MMBTU (one million BTU), a 0.26% increase. Today, the market opened with a rise and currently the price of the Nymex Henry Hub Future is traded, as of 16.57PM GMT, at 3.95$ MMBTU which is a 3.38% increase or 0.13 in $ MMBTU.