This past week, Dow Jones MarketWatch reporter Myra Saefong contacted us with some very interesting questions about the NYMEX uranium futures contracts.
The New York Mercantile Exchange will introduce on- and off-exchange traded uranium futures products for trading on May 7th.
Rather than simply respond with our opinion, we decided to poll a cross-section of our readership.
While not every subscriber was surveyed, we did receive an adequate sampling - about 400 readers.
To achieve a balanced geographical polling, we emailed to readers in about 60 countries.
More than 60 percent of our readership is in the United States.
Other key geographical regions include Japan, Canada, Germany, Israel, France, Spain/Portugal, Scandinavia, United Kingdom, Mexico, and Australia/New Zealand.
Readers included a good cross-section of those interested in the uranium and nuclear fuel sector: utilities, banks, financial institutions, hedge funds and retail investors.
The survey consensus confirmed there would be stronger interest in uranium.
But, we also discovered this strong interest would also bring greater price volatility.
Many believed NYMEX futures trading would not bring transparency to the uranium price.
Less than one-half believed futures trading would bring this about.
More than 66 percent believed the uranium price would go higher, but less than 7 percent said they would trade uranium futures contracts over the next twelve months.
More than 40 percent of our readers voted that those most likely to benefit from uranium futures trading would be current and near-term uranium mining companies.
Current producers include Cameco Corp, Denison Mines and Uranium One; near-term producers include Energy Metals, Uranerz Energy and Strathmore Minerals.
As many as 25 new companies could be producing uranium from their development projects by 2011.