Contango Report: Natural Gas Contango Widens
By S.M. Brorup | December 10, 2012

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Featured Commodity

CONTANGO WATCH: Natural gas' contango widened a bit this week, but remains typical for this time of year. At $0.02, the front-month natural gas roll is relatively inconsequential, at least by natural gas standards. More pertinent for traders are weather forecasts, the key driver of natural gas over the winter months. Currently, the NOAA is calling for mild temperatures for the bulk of December, which has pressured prices in recent sessions.

ROLL COSTS: It costs investors 9.79 percent annualized to roll front-month natural gas contracts, up from a cost of 7.99 percent.

BOTTOM LINE: Contango

Has oil moved into backwardation yet? What does corn's roll yield look like? How do you know when it's time to buy—or sell?

Each week, we investigate the futures curves of the most important commodities in the U.S., helping investors better understand the market and seize buy-and-sell opportunities as soon as they arise. For an easy-to-understand explanation of contango, backwardation and roll yields, please click here to go to our Hard Assets University.

To see current contango curve and front-month roll costs for each of our selected commodities, please select a sector or commodity below (or read the whole report):

Data as of close on December 7, 2012
Data courtesy IndexUniverse.com

Energy

Agricultural Commodities

Precious Metals

Soft Commodities

Industrial Metals

		Current Roll	Previous Week's Roll	Past Year Average Roll	Historical 12/07 5YR Annualized Roll
Energy	WTI	7.89%	7.74%	0.39%	27.71%
	Brent	-10.43%	-10.11%	-0.57%	20.90%
	HH Natural Gas	9.79%	7.99%	3.51%	10.80%
Precious Metals	Gold	0.91%	0.70%	0.12%	0.92%
	Silver	1.63%	1.17%	0.14%	1.11%
	Platinum	1.41%	0.88%	0.24%	1.63%
	Palladium	0.80%	1.68%	0.24%	1.31%
Industrial Metals	Copper	1.32%	0.75%	-0.02%	1.38%
	Aluminum	7.15%	6.37%	0.50%	7.04%
	Zinc	6.28%	5.74%	0.22%	5.65%
	Lead	3.87%	1.07%	0.20%	4.82%
	Nickel	1.48%	1.30%	0.11%	1.73%
	Tin	-0.28%	-0.27%	0.03%	-0.28%
Agricultural Commodities	Corn	2.27%	-1.37%	-1.49%	11.91%
	Wheat	6.46%	5.43%	1.80%	15.74%
	Soybeans	-0.30%	-3.15%	-0.39%	3.37%
	Live Cattle	20.28%	20.81%	1.45%	20.08%
	Lean Hogs	41.77%	38.51%	1.35%	40.10%
Soft Commodities	Coffee C	12.25%	11.99%	1.59%	9.21%
	Cocoa	0.25%	0.71%	0.01%	2.30%
	Sugar #11	3.82%	0.00%	-0.35%	-5.52%
	Cotton #2	7.25%	5.12%	0.03%	-2.31%