The Energy Information Administration's August 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook , released on August 11, puts one number at the centre of this winter's natural gas story. The outlook states that “we expect natural gas inventories to be a record 3,985 billion cubic feet (Bcf) at the end of October 2026,” a figure “which is an increase of 19 Bcf compared with the July STEO and 5% above the five-year average.” Ten years earlier the same commodity produced almost the same reading. On the EIA's weekly Lower 48 working gas series , the last October report of 2016, for the week ending October 28, recorded 3,963 Bcf. The two figures sit 22 Bcf apart, about half a percent. What changed is everything the stock has to be measured against. A stock figure is a numerator. On its own it is a volume, not a condition. This piece takes up a narrow question: when the numerator is flat across a decade and the denominator is not, which denominator should a reader use, and do the pl...
Two numbers, published by two different parts of the U.S. government, sit more than a percentage point apart. The Treasury reports that the average interest rate across all interest-bearing federal debt was 3.447% at the end of July 2026. The Federal Reserve's H.15 release for 25 August 2026 puts the ten-year Treasury yield at 4.64% and the two-year at 4.17% . The government is paying, on the whole stock of what it owes, well under what the market is currently charging on new money. The comparison is not quite like for like, and the ways in which it is not are the interesting part. One number is a month-end average across every security outstanding, including debt issued a decade ago at coupons that no longer exist in the market. The other is a single day's quote on new money. That gap is not an anomaly and it is not a mistake in either figure. It is what a stock looks like when it is measured against a price. What is worth measuring is how fast the first number moves t...