Does the spark spead ever breakdown

20 January 2006

March looks expensive, but the spark is keeping it high. Powerisk analyses this in further detail and suggests that there maybe opportunities to come in the near future.

Powerisk has already stated on numerous occasions that March as a trading month, is a difficult month to trade. The reason is that as a shoulder month between Winter and Summer, it does not know whether to take its lead from a potentially cold February or from a potentially mild April. Looking at previous graphs in March (04, 05, 06) we can see that its trading history has shown falls through the month of February, in 05 there was a late surge but nothing of note. Traditionally players in 04 and 05 have had mild winters, gas has perhaps not been as used through the winter as players have predicted and the bears return in February. One suspects that as traders dream of Summer holidays as milder weather starts to set in the bears become stronger. In reality much of the reason for March remaining high is as a result of spark spread traders holding the market at around £10, at this level there is no fundamental driver for trading with fair value for spark spreads around this level. March as a spark spread tends to be a bit lower than this forcing power prices to rise and gas prices to fall. Out and out gas producers see March relative to February and look to buy it up encouraging the spark traders to come back to the fore. In short March always takes longer to correct than most months, and this creates an opportunity for electricity to traders to sell March, most site weather and winter for not doing it, but history shows being long March is never a good trade.


Electricity  Gas  Weather  Spread 

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