In addition to UNG, other non-leveraged natural gas plays include the iPath Bloomberg Natural Gas Subindex Total Return ETN (NYSEArca: GAZ). One of the rivals to UGAZ is the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Natural Gas (NYSEArca: BOIL), which takes the two times or 200% daily performance of natural gas. BOIL is off 35.3% year-to-date.
The bearish equivalent to UGAZ is the VelocityShares 3x Inverse Natural Gas ETN (NYSEArca: DGAZ), which seeks to provide the daily inverse 3x or -300% performance of NYMEX natural gas futures. The ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Natural Gas (NYSEArca: KOLD) provides the daily inverse 2x or -200% performance.
Many observers, though, expect that higher demand for natural gas to heat homes and fire power plants, along with lower production, could steadily trim away at the large natural gas inventories even in a normal winter season.
“The unseasonably warm winter has been bad news for natural gas demand, since the commodity is largely used for heating. Meanwhile, the other-side-of-the-coin product, DGAZ, which is designed to provide triple-levered short exposure to nat gas, is up a bit less than 40 percent in 2017,” according to CNBC.
For more information on the natgas market, visit our natural gas category.