From Barron's Focus on Funds blog:
Natural Gas Prices Set To Hurdle Coal-to-Gas Roadblock: MS
Natural gas prices may only have another month or so before more favorable demand dynamics begin to kick in, opine Morgan Stanley’s strategists.*During early 1942 German submarines sank 609 merchant ships sailing between the U.S. East Coast and England, roughly 25% of all German submarine kills during the war.
Gas futures are ahead by 2.6% Tuesday and the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) is up by 2.7%. This summer, coal-to-gas substitution, on account of gas’ low prices, have helped keep prices down at a time when the gas glut was already pushing in that direction. Gas demand for power generation averaged 29.5 bcf/d in June, an increase of 6 bcf/d YoY, writes MS’ Hussein Allidina in an overnight research note.
It’s getting closer to the time of year when those dynamics weaken, he writes:
Once we pass the end-Oct constraint, gas prices will no longer need to satisfy coal-to-gas economics and will likely move higher as we enter the peak demand (heating) months, assuming normal winter weather, with production on a slow downtrend.
Later in the war U-boat crewmen would fondly look back on this period as 'Die Glückliche Zeit'.
The Halcyon Days or more colloquially "The Happy Time".*
That's the way securities class action attorneys look at the period before the mid-nineties.
Then came the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995....
