There's a reason for that, we don't want to lose any readers. The market is so whippy right now that I could be writing "Buy-Sell-Hold", "Short-Flat-Long" all day long and never get any work done. Plus, if anyone missed a single post they'd get wrong-footed, possibly lose money, get crabby and have to talk to the lady attorneys whose mellifluous voices may or may not bring them back into the readership.
And then the lady attorneys get mad at me because they should really be in Monaco for the end of the Primo Cup - Trophee Credit Suisse regatta and no they don't want to go to the Florida State Championship instead and I've wrecked their whole season and...arrrgh.
So yes we're very, very aware of what's going on in natural gas and if I can slip in something like Monday's "HAS NATURAL GAS PULLED BACK TO WHAT IS REAL SUPPORT?" at $4.84, within 60 minutes of tagging the $4.75 low mind you, reversing and hitting the current $5.5260 print, well yes, I'll do that but boy this is dangerous. See the chart at the CME.
Anyhoo, here's Bloomberg:
Natural gas retreated after yesterday surging the most in almost a week. CME Group Inc. raised margin requirements for trading the futures in New York to the highest level in more than four years amid increased price volatility.The futures turned higher after the above story was written, timestamped at 4:31 AM CT. Here's the action, and before you ask, the only thing I know is the $5.75-5.80 line from 2010 is as good an overhead resistance point as I can think of so we're close.
Futures for March delivery fell as much as 2.3 percent to $5.252 per million British thermal units in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and were at $5.354 at 10:24 a.m. London time. The contract rose 47 cents, or 9.6 percent, to settle at $5.375 yesterday, the biggest gain since Jan. 29.
The initial margin for next-month Henry Hub futures traded on Nymex will increase 9.9 percent to $5,500 for speculators from $5,005, effective after the close of business today, the operator of the exchange said in a notice yesterday. The new margin is the highest since October 2009, CME data show. Margin requirements have more than doubled from $2,530 on Jan. 3.
Gas futures are the most volatile commodity in the Standard & Poor’s GSCI gauge of 24 commodities. Volatility has jumped to 78.6 percent so far this year from 31.6 percent in 2013.
“Over the last four weeks historical volatility has more than doubled,” said Stephen Schork, president of Schork Group Inc., a consulting group in Villanova, Pennsylvania. “At the start of 2014, a 7 cent day-over-day move could be expected; today, a 22 cent move is the norm.”
Cold weather in the U.S. has helped fuel this year’s 26 percent gain in natural gas prices. MDA Weather Services predicted below-normal temperatures in most of the lower-48 U.S. states through Feb. 13. A winter storm will continue to move east today with heavy snow forecast from the Lower Great Lakes to New England and freezing rain for parts of the Northern Mid-Atlantic Coast to Southern New England, according to the U.S. National Weather Service....MORE
From FinViz:
