The largest natural gas-focused exchange traded fund (ETF) provider has filed a statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in order to refute what it sees as erroneous claims about the fund’s impact on the marketplace.
United States Natural Gas (UNG) is the largest natural gas fund, holding up to $480-million worth of natural gas futures and swaps. Various experts have pointed to this fund as the culprit of the run-up in natural gas prices, as well as the sudden drop in prices this year, reports Eileen Moustakis for Reuters.
This and next week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is conducting hearings to determine whether size limits should be in place when it comes to energy commodity investors (including ETFs). The hearings are meant to determine whether the run-up was caused by the natural gas ETF and other such funds.
However, an 8-K recently filed by UNG (and a previous 8-K filed by USO) shows that the buying and selling of these futures does not support this theory.
“This despite the claims of s0-called ‘experts’ to the contrary who, in their statements in recent months, always seem long on theory and very short on hard data when making their claims,” says John Hyland, the chief investment officer for the fund.