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From a far away perspective (in Austria) it looks like the cold blast in the US is coming to an end. I am surprized that the NGH futures did not move further and are far away from taking out the highs of Q4 2017.
I liquidated my long NGH C4.0 with a nice profit of 100 %.
Assuming higher temperatures in the near future, I began today to enter small positions in the NGN-NGJ bear spread and the RBN-HON spread.
Both spreads are supported by seasonals at this time of the year, according to MRCI data. Entry dates suggested by MRCI differ.
As always I am very interested in questions or comments, especially from traders observing the weather in the US more closely than I do.
Greetings from NY, It has been extremely chili here in NY. Friday and Sat we will be getting hit with an Artic cold blast coming in from Canada. Highs are expected to be zero and from what the're reporting parts of NY will be getting hit with minus 25 degree windshield factor. Then things seem to be warming up on Sunday. JP
It's surprisingly warm in Salt Lake area, the ski resort probably is going out of business if this keeps continue in the future. Been in Idaho and Utah for quite a while and this year is probably the warmest winter time ever.
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I too am a little surprised how quickly NG gave up the fear of winter. I've had a small outright bullish position on myself (very rare for me to have something like this on) and while I started buying in a little too early, continually adding and reducing the position at opportune times enabled me to lower the basis to a level where this most recent run up enabled me to exit for a profit but the trade was awful considering risk/reward or return/drawdown (~0.25).
Two years US Natural Gas stocks were at all time high's. While this is obviously bearish, one should also consider that the amount of storage we have has been increasing consistently. Since last winter stocks had started correcting, were no longer at all time high's but were still above 5 year averages. The last 3 months have seen stocks further erode so that we now stood just below 5 year averages. This last weeks 206 BCF withdrawal was the largest for this week of the year in at least 10 years, and we now sit firmly below the 5 year stock level. I think this clearly points to a shift in th supply-demand balance over the last 2 years.
It's cold out there, but it's only really cold in the Northeast. While prices in Chicago started out very strong, with $9 gas for 1/3, they dropped to $6.25 for the balance of the week, $3.75 for this weekend and $3.20 for balance of the month. Even in the Northeast prices are expected to drop considerably. TETCO-M3 (NJ) peaked at $95 for Friday, $20 for this weekend but back down to $4.15 for Balance of the month. Out west gas is still under $3! What this is telling you is that the markets don't think it's staying cold, in fact they think the balance of the month is going to be warm and the forecasts seem to support that.
Jan 6th...
and Jan 9th ...
and Jan 8-14
At this time of the year it's all about weather. If the forcast turns cold prices will rally, if it stays warm we'll probably sell off more. Remember that any Natural Gas still in storage at the end of March, basically becomes the first gas in storage for next year. As such if we have a surplus of gas March will probably end up pricing at a discount to April.
Sharing my trade here.. i legged into the March/April spread before i went on vacation so early Dec.. i got it at an average of 0.49
I did not take too much heat because i think my timing was just lucky.
After that i realized this could go much lower or even negative.. (there is a thread where SMCJB posted a chart of all the years and there were many years the spike never really came)
Anyway i exited half at 1.05 and the rest at 1.51. It went up to 2.08 or close to that.. sorry on vacation not tracking and documenting every day.
So yes went with the fundamentals and turned out ok.. but need to be careful on the entry in the future or use to trade it more actively.. rather than hoping for the winter spike in the future..
Note: I was also short put options and this was my method of averaging down since margin on additional naked puts was mounting quite significantly as prices were close or even past my short put price
Both trades are based on seasonal considerations. The lows for the year seem to be in. I was surprized that the cold blast in December did not move the prices of HO and NG more seriously.