Invest In The Natural Gas ETF

By Gordon Hammer

Did you follow natural gas prices this year? The trading range has been from a high of $6 to a low of $2.50 with the market currently trading around $5. A $3.50 yearly trading range is quite large. With that large of a range, a smart investor should be able to profit from it.

Whether you are a trader or investor, you will be able to find the right investment for you in natural gas. This article will show you different ways to trade natural gas. You will find Natural Gas ETFs that invest in stocs of producers,drillers and even futures.

Why should you look at the natural gas market? With the growing concern of carbon emissions' and carbon footprints, natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel and will used more than coal. Natural gas is also plentiful here in the Untied States so there will also be a push to use domestically found energy.

Increasing supplies is another reason to trade natural gas. Recently there have been more discoveries and improved methods of recovering natural gas here in the United States. Many Americans are pushing for tapping into these discoveries as a way to remove our dependence of foreign energy.

The natural gas market has caught the eye of the largest oil company in the world. XTO Energy, perhaps the biggest company in natural gas was purchased by ExxonMobil. If you recall last fall, oil investor T. Boone Pickens was on tv talking about how natural gas is the future for the United States. If people and companies like this are investing in natural gas, perhaps you should be too.

What are Natural Gas ETFs?

ETF is an Exchange Traded Fund. An ETF is similar to a mutual fund. An ETF can be made up of several stocks in that sector. An example would be the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF, ticker symbol XOP. This fund tries to replicate the total return performance of the S&P Oil and Gas Exploration & Production Select Industry Index. This fund holds stocks in natural gas companies that are involved in exploration and production of natural gas. Some of the stock that make up this fund are ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conocophillips, Occidental an Chesapeake Energy Corp. Please refer to the funds prospectus for the current holdings of the fund.

Perhaps the most popular natural gas etf is the United States Natural Gas Fund. The United States Natural Gas Fund, ticker symbol UNG, invest the entire fund in natural gas futures traded on NYMEX. This is an unleveraged fund and purchases the front month futures contract. When the contract is about to expire, it rolls them into the next contract month.

Thanks for reading this quick outline of the Natural Gas ETF market. This is potentially a very profitable market. - 32373

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