Markets Energy Natural gas
NATURAL GAS WEEKLY, 25 Sep 26
Natural gas NGAS
Funds adding exposure outweighs the risks for now. Average Hourly Earnings m/m on Fri is the main risk to this view.
Score +0.30
What's driving it
- Fund flows+0.30
Price: $3.21, up 8.1% on the week. Cleared $3.00.
For it
- Hedge funds trimmed about 35,000 contracts from their net short position, now about 66,000.
Funds adding exposure outweighs the risks for now. Average Hourly Earnings m/m on Fri is the main risk to this view.
📊 NATURAL GAS WEEKLY, 25 Sep 26 Call: Bullish, low confidence. Price: $3.21, up 8.1% on the week. Cleared $3.00. For it: ✅ Hedge funds trimmed about 35,000 contracts from their net short position, now about 66,000. Funds adding exposure outweighs the risks for now. Average Hourly Earnings m/m on Fri is the main risk to this view. 👀 Watch: Average Hourly Earnings m/m, Non-Farm Employment Change and Unemployment Rate Fri 02 Oct. Model call from public data, not advice. Data and track record: https://goldenstraddler.com/markets/natgasReleases to watch
- USD Average Hourly Earnings m/m forecast 0.3%, previous 0.3%Watch on YouTubeSource: BLS
- USD Non-Farm Employment Change forecast 89K, previous 162KWatch on YouTubeSource: BLS
- USD Unemployment Rate forecast 4.1%, previous 4.1%Watch on YouTubeSource: BLS
How the calls work
Each market gets a score between −1 and +1 from a handful of measured factors. Every factor turns one fact into a small score for that market, with a fixed weight, and the call is the weighted average: above +0.1 leans bullish, below −0.1 leans bearish, beyond 0.3 either way drops the word "leaning".
The same rules run over every past week to give the backtest. A call counts as right when the next week's close moves the way it said. The weights were chosen by looking at 2018 to 2022 only. From 2023 on, the model runs on data it never saw, so that's the honest test. Next to each hit rate we show how often the market simply went up, because always saying "bullish" would score that much.
What the test says: weekly direction is hard. The model has held up on unseen data in forex, where it beat both a coin flip and simply following the market's usual direction. In energy and crypto it hasn't beaten that bar since 2023, so read those calls as a summary of the data, not a forecast. Confidence on each call comes from that market's own record since 2023, lowered when today's factors disagree or some have no data.
- Trend
- Price against its 20 week and 50 week averages.
- Stretch
- Weekly RSI. Above 70 counts against more upside, below 30 against more downside.
- Positioning
- CFTC Commitments of Traders: the weekly change in the net position of hedge funds (managed money), leveraged funds or asset managers, and how crowded it is against the last 3 years.
- Dollar
- The dollar index, calculated with the DXY weights from ECB reference rates. A weaker dollar helps dollar-priced metals, oil and crypto.
- Real yields
- 10 year inflation-protected Treasury yield (FRED DFII10): the change over 4 weeks, and the level against 10 years.
- Fed path
- The 4 week change in 2 year Treasury yields (FRED DGS2), the market's read of where the Fed is heading.
- Fear gauge
- The VIX (Cboe, via FRED). Fear supports gold, the yen and the franc, and weighs on oil, copper, crypto and the Aussie and kiwi.
- Oil stocks
- Weekly US crude inventories excluding the strategic reserve (EIA, WCESTUS1).
- Oil and CAD
- The 4 week change in WTI, which tends to move the Canadian dollar.
Who made this, and what it isn't
Prepared by Daniel Zammit, which runs GoldenStraddler. The calls are generated automatically by the model described here, from data for the week ending 25 Sep 26. Prices, yields, positioning and the calendar are facts from the sources below. The call and the confidence are the model's opinion.
This is general market information, not personal investment advice. It doesn't consider your goals, finances or experience. Backtests and past calls don't predict future results.
Conflicts of interest. We sell the GoldenStraddler EA, and we earn commission from partner brokers when people we refer trade with them. Our own trading account runs the EA on gold news releases and doesn't follow these calls.
Sources
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED: 10 year real yield (DFII10), 2 year Treasury (DGS2), VIX (VIXCLS, © Cboe), and WTI, Brent and Henry Hub spot prices from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
- U.S. Energy Information Administration: weekly US crude oil stocks excluding the strategic reserve (WCESTUS1).
- European Central Bank reference rates, via Frankfurter. Our dollar index applies the DXY weights to these rates.
- U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Commitments of Traders.
- Live prices: gold-api.com (metals, crypto) and Kraken's public ticker (forex). Price history: Coinbase and Kraken (bitcoin, ether, PAX Gold). Calendar: ForexFactory.
Market artwork on this page is our own. "Watch on YouTube" opens a YouTube search for the release; we don't run or vouch for those channels.