Natural Gas: Well That Was A Timely Call

Doing a victory dance the day before the weekly EIA storage report is probably the hubristic kiss of death for the trade so if you are in, although we don't recommend initiating positions in the 24 hours ahead of the report, closing them is your call.

2.4280 up 0.0700

Previously:
August 30
Natural Gas: EIA Weekly Update 
Natty has been ticking up for the last week and it appears the game is afoot.

FinViz

The positioning of the commercials (vs the large speculative traders) is what caught our collective eye:
As noted in a late July post commercial users of natural gas are as long futures as we've seen in years:
which led to this on Aug. 21:  Ya Know What Seems Cheap? Natural Gas Seems Cheap.
Aug. 22
EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report
Front Futures: 2.169   -0.001

August 21
Ya Know What Seems Cheap? Natural Gas Seems Cheap.
From futures 2.1660 down 0.0520.
We do not recommend initiating positions within 24 hours of the Thursday storage reports unless you a) are a good guesser as to what the number will be and b) (and possibly more importantly) you can guess how the crowd will react to said number.
It's the old Keynesian beauty contest paradigm.

Back in the day it used to be easier, when you just needed to know the temperature outside the NYMEX and whether the traders felt chilly running in the door....

Up 12% so far in the futures, +70% cash-on-initial-cash-margin, we'll be back with more tomorrow.

For what it's worth we started paying attention to U.S. gas with July 30's "EIA: "Summer U.S. Natural Gas Prices On Track To Be the Lowest in More Than 20 Years" (pity the poor drillers)" and similar to the Lynas rare earth trade, which wasn't triggered until President Xi went to visit the rare earth magnet company last May 20th:

The one that isn't in trouble (except for the Chinese leaning on Malaysia to shut 'em down) is Lynas, a trade we've been thinking about for almost a year but just waiting, like the panther, for the moment to pounce, biding our time, like the panther waiting....just a little bit closer and....
Okay, maybe not really waiting to pounce, maybe waiting for something to land within a few inches.
So I don't over-exert myself:

LYC.AX 1.9750-0.0250 (-1.25%)

Risky as hell and overpriced because Wesfarmers made a rejected takeover bid and the punters have hope but still the only Western source worth looking at right now.

(it got to $3.05 on May 31, $2.45 last)