Not another newsletter

The Commodity Research Terminal

An interactive set of commodity panels — every input a market moves on, pulled on a schedule, cleaned, and laid out side by side, with writing that says what each number means and the history it is measured against.

One place for commodity research and insight, built for retail traders at both ends of the curve — whether you are working out what a basis spread is, or you have been trading them for twenty years and are tired of rebuilding the same picture every morning.

None of this is open yet. This page describes what is being built, not what you can use today. We publish when the work is finished, not on a schedule.

What a market looks like here

Natural gas, worked end to end.

Gas is the market the whole approach was built on, so it is the one to judge it by. Five surfaces, each assembled from the public record and dated, sitting in one frame instead of five tabs.

Weather Degree days for every demand centre, this year beside last.

Storage Weekly working gas against its own five-year band, revisions carried through.

Pipeline capacity Firm contracts by season, read out of the public filings that hold them.

Terminal flows What each terminal posts daily, next to the federal series that reports monthly.

Positioning What the weekly report said, with the date it describes rather than the date it landed.

What you can only see side by side

Storage Pipeline capacity
Inventory drawing down while winter capacity frees up is a fact about both. Read apart, neither panel shows it.

Weather Storage
A cold week means one thing at the top of the band and another at the bottom of it.

Terminal flows Positioning
Both describe something that has already happened, from different distances behind it. The frame keeps that distance visible.

And the part a chart cannot do

Someone has to say what it means.

Two kinds of piece. One arrives with the numbers and puts them in context. The other explains a piece of machinery once, properly, and stays useful for years — which is where the novice end of the curve gets caught up.

On the print What the print means Where the number sits against its own history, what conditions it belongs with, and what has tended to follow — with the sample and the window stated beside it. Short read first, full working underneath.

Explainer The Gas Year Has a Shape The industry's year starts on November 1. Firm pipeline capacity is contracted by season, and the whole grid's winter book sits in a public filing — the carry trade, written down as contracts.

What comes next

The same treatment, market by market.

These are the markets under consideration, not a delivery schedule. What a market needs before it arrives: its own inputs assembled from the public record, its own frame, and writing that explains the machinery behind it — and sources that can be held to that standard.

Energy Natural gas · Crude oil · Heating oil · RBOB gasoline

Grains & oilseeds Corn · Soybeans · Wheat · Meal / oil

Livestock Lean hogs · Live cattle · Feeder cattle

Metals Gold · Silver · Copper

Softs Sugar · Cotton · Coffee · Cocoa · FCOJ

Dairy Class III milk