Nuclear Maintenance Season Has Arrived

As we move through March, we continue to see market attention turn away from weather and more towards other supply/demand balance factors as heating demand fades away. That was not totally the case today, with prices pulling back on warmer overnight forecasts today. 

Our Morning Update alerted of rather significant overnight GWDD losses. 

And before that our Early Morning Text Message alerted that $2.72 support was likely to be tested, which prices moved just a cent below through the trading session today. 

Weather clearly played a large role in the decline, with J/K moving down sizably today. 

Yet weather was not the only thing we were monitoring today. In our Note of the Day for clients we noticed that nuclear outages had ticked up the last few days and were now over year-ago levels as we move into maintenance season. 

Meanwhile, traders are of course focused on an EIA print tomorrow that will shed more light on current balance. We similarly outlined our expectation for the print and its potential impacts in our reports today, accurately predicting as well that support would hold today and the back of the natural gas strip would lead us higher into the settle.