Inflation & Prices

Everyone’s an Energy Trader as Power Bills Hit the Sky in the US

In deregulated states, customers are turned de facto natural-gas forecasters, gambling on the direction of highly volatile markets when it’s time to renew their contracts

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Millions of Americans are being forced to bet on power and natural-gas prices at a time when even seasoned professionals are unsure where highly volatile markets are headedBloomberg Terminal.

For Floyd Stanley, a 66-year old retired software marketer in Dallas, keeping up with electricity rates is akin to a full-time job: He tracks them in a spreadsheet. Shopping around, he found that prices can swing by as much as 10% depending on the time of day.