What Fifty Years of Augusts Tell Me About Gas, Carbon and Soybeans

Most people skim seasonal tables. This month I slowed down on one, because August turned out unusually clean.

Only three markets post a genuinely strong tendency. Natural gas is the sharpest — long in nine Augusts out of ten over the past decade, and long across nearly fifty years, entering from a depressed price. European carbon shows the single strongest reading I track, though a softening recent window hints its pattern may be shifting. Soybeans stay bearish, and the last ten years show that downtrend speeding up rather than fading. Lean hogs add a clean short.

Then there’s the half nobody writes about: gold, canola, rice, platinum and Brent show no August edge at all — and a market that reliably has no calendar tell is telling you something too.

I break down each one, with the three-window method behind it, in the full piece on my Substack. Read it here: [LINK]. If you want these as they land, subscribing takes ten seconds.