Mar 20, 2008
At Time : (time are in GMT+7)
15:45 GBP/USD down (Sell)

ALWAYS put a Stop Loss (SL) MAX 40 pips, and Target Profit (TP) starting from 10 to 70 pips, you can use a trailing stop too.
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK !




Nymex Natural Gas Falls as Heating Demand Eases, Crude Tumbles

By Reg Curren

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Natural gas declined as heating-fuel use ebbed and some commodities, including crude oil, declined amid an outlook for the U.S. economy to slow.

Spring arrives tomorrow in the U.S., which will pare the need for gas to run furnaces. Oil tumbled after the Energy Department reported that U.S. fuel demand dropped last week.

``Gold is down, silver is down and so is crude, so it looks like we're starting to see a little bit of unwinding of the commodity hedges,'' said Phil Flynn, a senior trader at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. ``Natural gas is getting caught up in the overall sell-off.''

Gas for April delivery fell 39 cents, or 4.1 percent, to settle at $9.024 per million British thermal units at 3:06 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gas has risen 20 percent so far this year. Futures rose to more than a two-year high on March 13, closing at $10.23 per million Btu.

Crude oil for April delivery slipped $4.94, or 4.5 percent, to settle at $104.48 a barrel in New York. Oil is nine percent higher so far this year. Futures prices rose to $111.80 a barrel on March 17, the highest since trading began in 1983.

``As we get a renewed confidence in some of these other asset classes, like equities, some of the froth comes out of energy prices,'' said John Kilduff, the vice president of risk management at MF Global Ltd. in New York.

Commodities rose as investors sought a hedge against the U.S. dollar's decline. Speculators used natural gas as a cheaper alternative in an energy commodities rally that included crude and heating oil.

The fundamental underpinnings of gas demand, such as supply, suggest a price of $8.50 to $9 per million Btu, said Michael Dane, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in Houston.

LNG Imports

Analysts are most concerned with a delay in U.S. liquefied natural gas imports. ``It was around this week last year that we saw a big up-tick'' in import levels, said Dane. That hasn't happened this year.

Growing demand and higher prices in Europe and Asia have rerouted LNG shipments from the U.S. LNG is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid for shipment by tankers to markets too distant for pipelines.

LNG imports are averaging 800 million cubic feet a day, less than half the daily average of a year ago, Stacy Nieuwoudt, an analyst at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. in Houston, said in a note yesterday.

Inventories

Inventories of natural gas probably fell 80 billion cubic feet last week, according to the median of 17 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. The five-year average change is a decline of 57 billion cubic feet, according to the Energy Department.

The department is scheduled to release its weekly inventory report tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. in Washington.

Inventories are probably going to end the winter heating season on March 31 at 1.275 trillion cubic feet, near the long- term average, Dane said.

Gas stockpiles were 1.398 trillion cubic feet in the week ended March 7, about 57 billion cubic feet higher than the five- year average of 1.341 trillion, the department said on March 13.