Primary Commodities Report for February 16th - 20th

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 100 at the start of the period. 

For the week of February 16^th – 20^th, Natural Gas (Green) continued to follow a trend of decline. It began to rise slightly at the end of the week; however, it remained ~ 6.04% below the baseline. Gold (Yellow) fluctuated throughout the week; it started the week declining but slowly rose to end 0.72% above the baseline. Brent Oil (Black) and Nickel (Red) followed a similar trend for the week. Each rose rapidly during the week. Brent Oil (Black) ended the week at 5.91% above the baseline. Nickel (Red) also rose rapidly and while it had a slight decline towards the end of the week, it remained 4.06% above 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.      

Natural Gas (Green) continued to fall during this month, it fell below the lower bound for this week with a price of $2.96/MMBtu. Nickel (Red) rose for the week and was able to break slightly above the upper bound to end the week at a price of $19.19/Share.  Brent Oil (Black) remains above the upper bound and continued to rise this week, ending at a price of $71.76/Barrel. Similarly, Gold (Yellow) rose for the week and remained above the upper bound with a price of $5059.30/Troy oz. 

Additional Reading  

Oil analysts say there is a supply glut — why that hasn't translated to lower prices this year 

Yahoo finance article states that while 2026 was expected to begin the year due to an oversupply of Oil it appears they have instead had higher demand and prices have now rose. Global efforts from 2025 to reduce the amount of oil in the market in expectations that green energy would be used more commonly have proven to be unsuccessful in lowering the price.