It snowed a lot in parts of the US earlier this week, and the whole country was shivering as temperatures dipped below freezing in all 50 states. While whispers of another “polar vortex” had been circulating since the summer, this week’s cold snap still caught the markets off guard. Hence a jump in natural gas prices.
This latest blanketing of precipitation, “snowvember,” they’re calling it, buried some US regions in multiple feet of snow and killed seven people, but it wasn’t as extensive as the snowstorms that his the US last January. With temperatures expected to return to normal overs the next few weeks, traders already are dumping contracts they just finished bidding up.
After all the winter’s snow melts, watch out for the state GDP figures in June to check out the extent of the local economic damage. Remember, last year’s polar vortex took a big bite out of first-quarter GDP for the US as a whole.
