Primary Commodities Report for December 1st - 5th

By: Gabriella Acevedo, The Quinnipiac University Global Economics Research Team

Commodities Index

Source: Yahoo Finance and own calculations. Rates are in United States dollars per one (1) unit of goods. Brent Crude Oil is measured in barrels. Natural Gas is measured in MMBtu (Million British Thermal Units), Gold is per troy ounce, and for Nickel the price reflects price per share of (NIKL) ETF. They are all indexed to be at 100 at the start of the period.

Natural Gas (Green) is the biggest mover this week. It started the week slowly increasing with a minor decline on the 2nd. However, it rose for the remainder of the week, ending at 9.05% above the baseline. Nickle (Red) began the week declining but had a slight increase for the remainder of the week, bringing itself to 1.15 % above the baseline. Brent Oil (Black) did not show much movement this week; it had a slight decline but rose shortly after ending the week at 0.09% above the baseline. Gold (Yellow) also declined this week and while it had an increase, it remained ~ 0.12% below the baseline.

Commodities Historical Trends

Source: Yahoo Finance and own calculations. Rates are in United States dollars per one (1) unit of goods. Brent Crude Oil is measured in barrels. Natural Gas is measured in MMBtu (Million British Thermal Units), Gold is per troy ounce, and for Nickel the price reflects price per share of (NIKL) ETF. The center line is a rolling three-month average. The upper and lower boundaries are the average plus and average minus one standard deviation, respectively, for the same three-month period.

During this week Nickle (Red) showed improvement while having a drop at the mid-point of the week it was able to break the lower bound and reach the baseline with a price of $14.23/share. Natural Gas (Green) remains above the upper bound with a price of $5.28 /MMBtu.  Brent Oil rose during the week and broke past the lower bound with a price of $ 63.75/barrel. Gold (Yellow) broke past the upper bound this week with a price of $ 4212.90/troy oz.

Additional Reading

Natural Gas Climbs to $5 Heading into Winter Season

Yahoo Finance article states that Natural Gas reached $5 for the first time in three years due to demand for the winter season along with the U.S now investing in nuclear tech and AI centers.