Chart Deck

Funds short TTF

Speculative capital prices in return of Russian gas to Europe, as global LNG glut deepens | Chart Deck — 27 Nov 2025

Seb Kennedy

27 Nov 2025 — 4 min read

Investment funds are finally shorting the EU gas market — a decisive sentiment break that arrives oddly early in the heating season, aided by the deepening LNG glut.

Market players scrambled to reprice the risk of the Russian gas returning to Europe after the (unworkable) US-Russia ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine was leaked to the press. Investment funds bought another 29 TWh of short positions last week, pushing their aggregate net position into negative territory (-11 TWh) for the first time since March 2024.

This development, while long anticipated by Energy Flux, is nonetheless notable at this early stage of winter and with natural gas stocks at lower levels than in recent years. In essence, shorting TTF now is a bet against LNG supply shocks and cold weather — a brave position this side of Christmas.

The geopolitical context that gave rise to this inversion in speculative directionality does not appear to support the price action it triggered. Peace in Ukraine remains a distant prospect; resumption of Russian pipeline gas flows to Europe even moreso. Europe remains reliant on robust LNG supply and Asian indifference towards the spot market.

The big question facing the market is whether the current setup is a bear trap; the TTF Risk Model still signals as much. Bears have built out their short position to 463 TWh over 16 consecutive weeks, the longest ever period of short buying on TTF. At any point, this could break to the upside.

This week’s downloadable Chart Deck contains 60+ slides that dig into the factors driving bearish sentiment, how positioning has shifted across the curve, and what the risk indicators suggest about the durability of the short move.

You’ll also see how futures markets are repricing US LNG as marginally economic in Asia, with delivered costs drifting toward a 14% crude-slope equivalent for next winter — a sign of things to come, as feed gas costs rise and export sale prices fall (read more about that in the recent Deep Dive, US LNG eats itself).

Freight has lost some of its bite, briefly slowing the basin-lock dynamics that hardened suddenly in recent weeks. And the global flow charts show an increasingly Europe-heavy trade despite softening Transatlantic-NWE spreads.

If you want the full picture of how sentiment, economics and cargo flows are lining up as winter begins, it’s all in this jam-packed datavis-heavy Chart Deck:

Highlights (click to expand):

Funds flip net short, while commercial users quietly expand longs — a clean sentiment divergence that strengthens the signal (slides 14-26)
The TTF Risk Model raw signal pivots back into bearish risk pricing but lower latency scores are still pointing bullish, hinting at an overreaction rather than a structural turn (slides 27-31)
Freight rates ease slightly but remain elevated, reinforcing Europe’s gravitational pull on Atlantic FOB cargoes despite soft TTF widening the Asian LNG premium (slides 35-36)
US LNG netbacks for Winter ’26 are collapsing toward marginality, with spot-route economics now materially worse than long-term oil-linked alternatives (slide 42)
Global LNG flow charts reveal Europe’s rising share offsetting China’s disinterest in LNG, underscoring a supply-led market where cargoes follow the least soft netbacks, not consumption strength (slides 52-65)