The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) lists Henry Hub natural gas futures contracts for up to four years into the future under the symbol NG. The most active or liquid NG price is defined by the front continuous or contract nearest to expiration. In this lesson, you will create a one-year chart of the closing price for the front continuous NG contract. You will capture the price history for all NG contracts trading as the nearest to expire for the last year.

The futures core database offerings gives you the choice of using either a generic contract, such as the front continuous natural gas contract or the front January continuous natural gas contract; or a specific contract, such as the March 1999 contract. A continuous contract is really a chain of prices created from several different contracts that share certain characteristics.

For example, the price history of a front continuous natural gas contract may include prices for the December 1998 contract for the period of time that contract traded as the nearest to expire, the next price series may be for the January 1999 contract when the December 1998 expired, etc. The front continuous January contract is a price chain that connects January contracts that are the nearest to expire.

Using an unadjusted price series from a continuous contract can result in a chart that has significant distortions due to the price gaps between the expiring contract and the subsequent contract.

The completed Worksheet appears as follows: