Daryl Montgomery reports that while energy investors have had their attention glued to the oil and natural gas markets in 2016, they may want to pay more attention to the uranium market in 2017. WTI Oil near-term futures bottomed at just over $26 per barrel in mid-February and peaked in the mid-50's before the end of the year. Natural gas prices also more than doubled from their bottom in early March to their high in late December. Uranium, on the other hand, was the left out member of the energy complex. The commodity did not confirm a possible bottom until the end of November 2016. Uranium stocks bottomed a few weeks earlier and began rallying immediately after the November 8th presidential election.
Peak uranium prices were reached in 2007. As early as 2001, the term nuclear renaissance was being used to describe a global a resurgence in the building of nuclear power plants. After a 15-year construction hiatus that last from the late 1980s to early 2000 that resulted from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the U.S. and the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown in the USSR. There was an increase in uranium prices until the late 1970s, when nuclear plants were being built in Europe and North America. Prices then fell and were flat until the early 2000s. New construction of plants, which was taking place mostly in Asia, then started driving prices higher for yellow cake, as uranium ore is known. Despite, the events that are peculiar to uranium, its overall price pattern is similar to the historical movement of commodity prices in general.
Original URL: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4040129-will-uranium-energy-superstar-2017
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