Natural Gas Plunges

December 27, 2005
Ashton Dorkins

Last weekend I had the pleasure of talking to
Floyd Upperman about how he uses the Commitments Of Traders report. Floyd is at
the forefront of combining the COT report with futures trading and

recently published his first
book, "Commitment
of Traders: Strategies For Tracking The Markets And Trading Profitably"
(John Wiley and Sons, December 2005).

You can read

The Big Saturday Interview here.

Post holiday trading was light with
no economic news released today. The economic calendar is light for
the week with Consumer Confidence (tomorrow), and Existing Home Sales (Thursday)
being the highlights.

In the energies, Natural Gas fell sharply for the third
consecutive session, declining more than 10%, the largest fall in almost
3-years. Heating Oil also closed lower with significantly warmer weather than
normal contributing to the declines.

The flattening/inverting yield curve has been getting a lot of
media attention lately and after today’s rally in the Treasury market 10-yr
yields converged with 2-yr yields. 2-yr yields are already above 5-yr yields for
an inversion at the short-end of the curve.

The Yen fell against the US Dollar and Euro after a government
report showed a larger than expected drop in household spending in Japan.

For a review of the Dollar in 2005 and a look ahead to 2006, read

Jes Black’s column.