Commodity Seasonal Charts - Futures Seasonal Charts

Seasonality of Futures

Although not 100% accurate-as any weatherman will tell you-weather is, in fact, the chief contributor to seasonal futures trading. The annual cycle from warm to cold weather and then back again affects all the agricultural commodity markets as their supply and demand coincides with the planting and harvesting seasons. However, the annual weather pattern can stretch its power to all the commodities. For example, demand for heating oil typically rises as cold weather approaches but subsides as inventory is filled and decreases even more as the summer months get closer.

These annual cycles in supply and demand give rise to the seasonal price phenomena or what we would simply call seasonality. This annual pattern of changing conditions may cause a more or less well-defined annual pattern of price responses. Seasonality, then, may be defined as a market's natural rhythm-an established tendency for prices to move in the same direction around similar time most years.