Paddy O'Furniture

     I went out last night to the local watering hole for a nip before bed.  They had a local singer performer who had an Irish aspect, an Irish name, and an Irish repertoire.  He was not very good,
which is neither here nor there, and I had trouble distinguishing his lyrics.
     At one point in the performance he took a breath to say about how uncommonly warm it was. Now if you haven't read my previous posts about natural gas, now would be a good time to check them out.  There was just something about his comment that did not stick right with me.
     The evening was warmer than the previous one, as well as the next one.  but checking with reasonabloy dependable sources in the internet I ascertained that the temperature was well within the norms for the given date and time.  As I performed this exercise I realized that his statment had not been a casual friendly gesture, but rather a political statement.  So one train of though launched in my brain was, "How sad, that as a society we have become so politicized, so opionated, that we cannot even have a conversatiion with a stranger about the weather without its being a political debate."  The next thought was, "How sad that we have become so politicized that we don't pay attention to the actual world around us anymore, we all have our minds completely made up already about how things are and we don't need for reality to intrude."

     Tomorrow night, the temperature is going to be uncommonly cold for the date and time.  On balance for the month, the temperatures have been slightly below the thirty year average.  Next week, the temperatures are going to be well below average, not only here but across much of the most populated areas of the continental United States.  Parts of Texas are seeing temps thirty or more degrees colder than average.  Already a few astute traders are beginning to notice.  Natural Gas spot prices are just beginning to rise, despite everyone's preconceived political beliefs.  It will be several weeks before very many people put it together.  Demand way more than it has been recently as electric generation, industries, residences, and even some transportation consumption has been added to the infrastructure.  Also, due to the lack of current operational rigs and the faster decay of fracked wells which have become our primary source  recently, the available supply is not what it has been and in fact will be insufficient to meet demand in the dead of winter.

     But I took heart in realizing that this is always how it works,  in the markets.  Feast or famine.  People catch on one by one, a few at first, then a few hoards, and finally the stragglers come along, the ones who always wait to make very, very sure, and who always buy at the top and then sell at the bottom.  Long about the first of May my Irish folk singer will finally realize that he is cold, and maybe he should invest in some natural gas or maybe install a gas space heater in his house or something.  By then I will be ready to take profits and getting ready for the beach....