NEW YORK, Jan 8, 2026, 06:56 EST — Premarket
The United States Natural Gas Fund was flat at $11.78 in premarket trade, after jumping 4.4% on Wednesday. The ETF fell 3.0% on Tuesday as the gas market swung back and forth early in the new year.
Benchmark Henry Hub natural gas was at $3.57 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), up 1.4% early Thursday, after trading between $3.55 and $3.63. The move comes with traders focused on fresh storage data rather than the last round of weather models.
UNG is built to mirror the day-to-day percentage moves in Henry Hub prices by holding short-dated natural gas futures, mainly on NYMEX and ICE. That structure can track fast moves closely, but it also means investors can get whipsawed when the fund rolls from one contract to the next.
Sprague Energy said the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly storage report due later Thursday is expected to show a 108 billion cubic feet (Bcf) withdrawal for the week ended Jan. 2, versus a 40 Bcf pull a year ago and a five-year average draw of 66 Bcf. The firm also noted the February NYMEX contract settled at $3.350 on Tuesday after trading as low as $3.324.
East Daley Analytics put the market’s expected withdrawal a bit higher, at 114 Bcf, and said that would leave inventories slightly above the newly recalculated five-year average while still below last year’s levels. The firm also flagged a dip in pipeline-sample volumes to an average 69.3 Bcf per day (bcfd) for the week ended Jan. 4, down 1.5% from the prior week.
The setup still looks two-sided. “Physical natural gas prices are crashing, with Henry Hub spot prices trading at a mere $2.86 per MMBtu,” Eli Rubin, an energy analyst at EBW Analytics Group, wrote in a report carried by Rigzone, while adding that “weather remains king.” Rubin also pointed to record LNG feedgas of 19.9 bcfd as a support point, but warned the February contract could slide toward $3.25 if warmth sticks. Rigzone
Moves in gas-linked equities were modest in early U.S. trading: EQT was up about 2%, Antero Resources gained about 1.8%, and LNG exporter Cheniere Energy added roughly 0.7%. Traders often treat the group as a higher-beta read on the same weather-and-storage tape that drives futures and UNG.
Weather remains the biggest unknown because it can change demand faster than production can. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said its Jan. 13–17 outlook starts with above-normal warmth across much of the Lower 48 before a colder trend shows up late in the period, a shift that can still leave net heating demand hard to pin down.
