If you were perfect you could have made these 6 (or 7 depending how you count) trades today in Natural Gas and made 14.2% unlevered or 243% of the required overnight margin rate!

Buy the close on Wednesday 15th @ 4325
Sell & REVERSE Thursday 16th 9am @ 4490
Buy & REVERSE Thursday 16th 1030am @ 4390
Sell & REVERSE Thursday 16th 12pm @ 4485
Buy & REVERSE Thursday 16th 115pm @ 4345
Sell & REVERSE Thursday 16th 145pm @ 4415
Buy before Globex closes Thursday 16th 515pm @ 4370

Trade 1 Buy 4325 Sell 4490, Profit +165 or 3.8%
Trade 2 Sell 4490 Buy 4390, Profit +100 or 2.2%
Trade 3 Buy 4390 Sell 4485, Profit +95 or 2.2%
Trade 4 Sell 4485 Buy 4345, Profit +140 or 3.1%
Trade 5 Buy 4345 Sell 4415, Profit +70 or 1.6%
Trade 6 Sell 4415 Buy 4370, Profit +45 or 1.0%
Total Profit +615 or $0.615/MMBtu = $6150 per contract = 14.2%

Nice chart, esp. the volume-by-price histogram or whatever it's called. Has that feature existed in IB for a long time or is it something new?

As long as I can remember

CafeGrande 

Nice chart, esp. the volume-by-price histogram or whatever it's called. Has that feature existed in IB for a long time or is it something new?

As far as i know, unfortunately, it only works for charts < 2days, not monthly or year charts.
at least i can't turn on the volume histogram when i take a wider range.


@SMCJB care to share your thought who was selling (1 big party?/ commercial) and who was buying (speculators)?


below the updated NG inventory chart, light green is 2014
so far nothing special, will get interesting if we get below 1000bcf

Feb NG went up 8 cents in 30 minutes just now (1:40-2:10 ET) with heavy vol. Has just dropped 5 cents of that increase in next 20 minutes. Crazy!

@crito If new “polar pig” unfolds as it has been forecast recently, we will get there very soon (1000 bcf).

Alphachase 

@crito If new “polar pig” unfolds as it has been forecast recently, we will get there very soon (1000 bcf).

@Alphachase,

Don't use bold or underline code when mentioning someone. Simply type @crito -- it's just like on twitter or facebook, just @Username. The end, nothing special.

Mike

Small chart, big message from a Friday, January 17 EIA report:

The extreme 10 cent moves in one hour on NG this winter are making it look like 2006 again. Extremely large traders moving the market and battling it out.

This is from DCOT futures only report.
CFTC Commitments of Traders Long Report - Natural Gas (Futures Only)



23% of gross position longs are held by 4 traders. But since this includes commercial traders I don't know if we can gain anything from this.